


Righteous Men

by Thanatopsiturvy



Category: Ghost Adventures RPF, Supernatural
Genre: Bisexual Dean, Crack Crossover, Crack Treated Seriously, Crossover, Crossover Pairings, First Time, Haunted Houses, Homophobic Language, Horror, Internalized Homophobia, Lots of plot, M/M, Other, Slow Build, sexy ghosts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-20
Updated: 2014-09-10
Packaged: 2018-02-14 01:09:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 9
Words: 30,173
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2172210
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thanatopsiturvy/pseuds/Thanatopsiturvy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Zak Bagans would, by no means, consider himself an amateur when it comes to his job. He has been to some of the darkest, most haunted places on earth and has been up close and personal with a myriad of angry and vengeful spirits. But a large manor house in the cold, isolated mountains of Maine could destroys everything he's ever held to be the truth. That, and the strange brothers who show up unexpectedly at their lockdown calling themselves "hunters". Especially the one named Dean. What an asshole.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Lockdown

**Author's Note:**

> "All houses wherein men have lived and died  
> Are haunted houses. Through the open doors  
> The harmless phantoms on their errands glide,  
> With feet that make no sound upon the floors."  
> \- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Haunted Houses
> 
> This is my first fanfiction to be posted on this site! I really had a fun time writing this one, so I hope you enjoy reading it. I have the story completely finished, so I'll be posting chapters as I finish revising them.
> 
> Just as an obvious disclaimer: this story contains people that actually exist in real life. I just want to put it out there that I am in NO WAY affiliated with them or pretend to know anything about their lives. I do not intend to make any money off of this or their likenesses. If anything, the characters in this story are just roughly based off of their real-life counterparts. 
> 
> Zak Bagans, if you're reading this, turn back now buddy. Just don't. Or at least stop before the last chapter. Save yourself. 
> 
> This work was based around Richard Matheson's horror classic "Hell House". It also draws from the works of Shirley Jackson, Steven King, and Robert Marasco. (The Haunting of Hill House, The Shining, and Burnt Offerings). Check them out!
> 
> Happy reading, y'all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "All houses wherein men have lived and died  
>  Are haunted houses. Through the open doors  
>  The harmless phantoms on their errands glide,  
>  With feet that make no sound upon the floors."  
>  \- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Haunted Houses
> 
> This is my first fanfiction to be posted on this site! I really had a fun time writing this one, so I hope you enjoy reading it. I have the story completely finished, so I'll be posting chapters as I finish revising them.
> 
> Just as an obvious disclaimer: this story contains people that actually exist in real life. I just want to put it out there that I am in NO WAY affiliated with them or pretend to know anything about their lives. I do not intend to make any money off of this or their likenesses. If anything, the characters in this story are just roughly based off of their real-life counterparts.
> 
> Zak Bagans, if you're reading this, turn back now buddy. Just don't. Or at least stop before the second to last chapter. Save yourself. No-homo.
> 
> This work was based around Richard Matheson's horror classic "Hell House". It also draws from the works of Shirley Jackson, Steven King, and Robert Marasco. (The Haunting of Hill House, The Shining, and Burnt Offerings). Check them out!
> 
> Happy reading, y'all.

September 23  
4:30 pm  
4 Hours until Lockdown

 

It was raining.

Zak heard Nick audibly sigh, his hands tightening on the leather steering wheel, entire body rigid with concentration and anxiety. The Land Rover valiantly roared up the slick, winding drive. Visibility lessened as the paved road turned to gravel, the gravel turning to mud. As Aaron fidgeted with equipment in the backseat, Zak started feeling the slow swell of excitement that came with every new case bubbling inside of him, threatening to boil over from the anticipation of their arrival. The hunt never grew old, never dulled. The adrenaline rush kept him going, kept him feeling alive. He sunk into the front seat of the car, a small smile creeping across his face as Neil Young played quietly in the background of the radio static.

"Hey," Aaron spoke up from behind him, "we should probably get some footage arriving at the place. The rain makes it seem all creepy and shit. Maybe Zak could give a recap of some of the back story before we do the full dub?" Zak straightened in his seat, preparing to slip into his TV persona.  
"Yeah, sure, go ahead and roll," he shrugged, clearing his throat as he twisted in the seat to face Aaron. The little red light started blinking on the side of the camera.  
"So we're up in the Middle of Nowhere, Maine," Zak began with a smirk, "heading to what is known as the most evil house in America." He paused dramatically, turning to look out the front window at the misty landscape. The countless interviews of the townspeople in the city below flashed through his mind. They all seemed incredibly frightened by the possibility of people willingly traveling to the house, quietly declining to speak on the subject when asked. They had scraped by with barely enough history and eye-witness accounts to fill the first fifteen minutes of the show, unlike the usual twenty or so that they were more comfortable with. It was unsettling, but also exhilarating.  
"The house originally belonged to a man by the name of Emmet Velasquez, who supposedly hosted orgies and satanic rituals inside, including possible human sacrifices." He licked his lips, trying to remain somber for the camera.  
"A lot of people have tried to investigate the Velasquez manor, and many rarely make it for more than an hour inside the walls. Of course, we're going to be locked inside for an entire night."

Aaron grinned nervously, shutting off the camera.  
"This is gonna be so crazy," he half giggled, quickly rewinding the footage to play it over. Nick scoffed.  
"If we get there in once piece... The fog is getting pretty fucking thick. I can barely see ten feet in front of the headlights." His hand shot out and fumbled blindly for a moment before clicking the radio off. Neil Yong immediately went dead and the three were left in the dull white noise of rain pounding against the car roof.  
"Just take it slow, man, we still got about four hours until sundown," Zak soothed, sinking back into the front seat once again. He casually put one foot up on the dash.  
"Hey, no scuffs. This is a rental," Nick scolded, halfheartedly shooing Zak's foot away with little success.  
"Dude, just chill out and drive." Zak leaned back into the seat back, shutting his eyes with a long exhale. He was too wired on caffeine to sleep, but he still felt some shuteye was appropriate. After only a few moments, he couldn’t stand it anymore and opened his eyes to slits, gazing curiously out the passenger-side window.

The blanket of fog continued to thicken as they wound their way up the muddy mountain road. All the stories said that Velasquez had wanted his extravagant manor house to be completely isolated in the untamed Maine wilderness. As Zak watched the rugged pines in the valley below disappear behind the thick envelope of white mist, he felt that the man had most definitely succeeded. His mind began to wander back to the long, dark hallways of countless hospitals, manor houses, or hotels where he had walked alone for the sake of the show. Isolation had never been something he craved, but more so a test of his own sanity. He shivered, despite himself.

The road narrowed, becoming curvier with much steeper drop-offs.  
"Jesus," Aaron commented from the back seat, looking down into the white abyss of the valley, filming a few seconds just for the novelty of it. After what seemed like an hour, a large shape began to emerge in front of them.  
"Start rolling, start rolling," Zak insisted giddily as he quickly righted himself. Aaron fumbled momentarily before switching the camera on.  
"Damn..." Zak whistled lowly. "This is one creepy-ass looking place." An understatement.

The manor was much bigger than Zak had originally thought. Calling it a mansion would not have been much of a stretch. It loomed over them, swallowing the sky with its jutting cornices and jagged chimneys. The sides of the house were almost completely covered with ivy, obscuring many of the windows, crawling down the walls and extending across the main walkway leading up to the house, which was flanked by stagnant ponds and dying vegetation. The only two windows that remained uncovered seemed to stare disapprovingly down at them, as a man might stare at an ant that had just crawled across his table. The house itself looked as though it had simply come into existence along side its maleficent owner. Never touched by human hands, it had simply arisen out of the sickly swamps, a primordial evil that had been long forgotten, left beside the dim firelight of a caveman’s tale of things mercurial and wicked. As the car rolled closer, an atavistic fear curled in the pit of Zak’s stomach, a desperate voice in his head screaming for him to get away, to flee. He promptly ignored it.

"Hey, whoa, is that the caretaker?" Nick pointed into the heavy mist where the figure of a man stood beside an old black car. They pulled closer.  
"Holy shit, he looks like fucking Riff Raff..." Zak laughed, Aaron following with a snort of his own. Zak pushed his anxiety down further with another forced laugh at the old man's expense.  
"Dude, he's just as creepy as the fucking house," Nick mumbled, putting the car into park. 

Before he could touch the key to kill the ignition, the engine died.  
"What the..."  
"Dude...."  
"No fucking way."  
"Did the car seriously just die?" Zak asked, completely unable to mask his excitement as he pulled his own camera out of the rucksack at his feet. He quickly switched it on, pointing it at Nick as he unsuccessfully attempted to turn the car back on.  
"Alright, so," Zak began, sounding slightly breathless. "We just pulled up to the house and things are already going haywire," he narrated. Nick cursed in the background as the car engine whirred futilely.  
"I think this is the first time we've ever had car trouble..." Aaron commented from the back seat, his camera also on Nick.  
"Shit, here comes Riff Raff..." Nick said, rolling down Zak's window.

The caretaker was tall and gangly with long, stringy gray hair. He was dressed in a dirty old suit with patches on the elbows of the jacket, looking like a man from a different era. He strode towards them with a calm, sinister authority, but there seemed to be something unnatural about his gait, as if he were walking on stilts.  
"Car trouble?" he asked with a toothy smile, leaning against the car door and into Zak’s personal space. He unconsciously leaned away, making eye contact with Aaron in the rearview mirror.  
"Yeah..." Nick answered tentatively. "Do you have a number we could call? Repair service? Towing?"  
"No service out here... and the phone lines in the house haven't been connected in years," he explained. "But I'd be happy to send someone to come for you all in the morning once I get back into town." Zak heard Aaron make a soft, strangled noise from the backseat.  
"I guess that would work," Nick offered, moving to get out of the car. Aaron followed suit. Zak sat unmoving. The caretaker was still leaning on the car door, blocking his exit and eying him with a strange expression, as if he were trying to solve a puzzle.  
"Um..." was all Zak could manage before the caretaker smiled again, pushed off the door, and began walking backwards away from the car.  
"Well once you boys are ready, I'll let you on in and give you a little tour," he offered cheerily.

Around the back of the car Aaron had turned off his camera.  
"Dude, I have a bad feeling about this, man..." Aaron warned. "And, yeah, I know I say that about a lot of places...but I've never been more serious about it."  
"Look, just stay cool. We can't say one way or another that the car thing is paranormal. It's a rental so it may just be a shitty car," Nick reasoned, pulling several tarps out of one of their bags to cover their equipment.  
"Plus, there isn't much we can do now," Nick added. "We're here until dawn." Zak let out a long, exasperated sigh as he turned his camera off. No way out.  
"Fuck."

 

\- - - - - 

September 23  
7:54 pm  
36 Minutes to Lockdown

 

 

They had decided to set up home base in the large parlor that was used for entertaining guests off to the right of the main entryway. Velasquez was a party animal, by nature, and spared no expense on decoration. Every detail was a testament to his vanity and narcissism, including the massive self-portrait hanging above the fireplace.  
"Jesus, this guy was something else," Zak commented to the camera as he zoomed in on Velasquez's face. He wasn’t a handsome man, but he didn’t look particularly evil either. In fact, he looked fairly ordinary. His cheekbones were hollow, eyes deeply set, and hair slickly combed back into a ponytail. His thin lips were set in a disapproving line. Zak shook his head, turning on the spot to aim the camera back of the other two. Nick and Aaron quietly unpacked their equipment, hooking up their generators and double-checking all the batteries. They all worked silently, still reeling from their walk-through of the house.

The tour had left them with several hotspots to investigate during the night, though it was safe to say that none of them were excited about it. 

The first was in the kitchen: a long, rectangular room with several rusting iron ovens, an island that nearly ran the length of the room, and a massive wooden chopping block that bowed deeply in the middle from use and age. Zak had wearily inspected the discoloration that stained the center with growing suspicion. The caretaker somewhat nonchalantly relayed the story of the man that was cooked alive in one of the giant ovens, as well as the rumors that Velasquez himself was prone to frequent cannibalism, being under the impression that it brought eternal youth. Aaron had looked sick to his stomach the entire time, but had kept the camera rolling none-the-less.

The second spot was the incredibly unnerving swimming pool that was located in the basement. It was a simple, two lane lap pool that had long been drained of its water. Their voices echoing off the tile made it sound like hundreds of people were in the room with them. And maybe there were. The stories of unnatural forces pulling guests down into the water never to resurface left Zak feeling slightly numb. He could see unease creeping onto the faces of his companions more and more with each new rumor and legend.

The third spot was the private chapel that resided at the far end of the left wing. Upon entering, Zak immediately felt overcome with nausea, which was made worse when he looked up at the explicit paintings of orgies and torture that lined the walls.  
"What in the actual fuck!" Nick yelled as Aaron immediately turned to leave, shutting off his camera as he bolted from the room with a strangled scream. Zak felt paralyzed, only his eyes able to move as he scanned the unholy testament to man’s perversions with a sick kind of fascination. Finally, his trailing gaze made it to the alter and he nearly dropped his camera. There on the wall was a giant, wooden crucifix of a bloody and battered Jesus sporting an intimately detailed erection.  
"No..." Zak whispered, backing out of the room, eyes unable to leave the atrocity. The caretaker remained silent, watching the men retreat with hollow, expressionless eyes.

Aaron was panicking in the hallway, pacing back and forth as he clutched his chest.  
"No, NO. FUCK this, guys. No, I am not fucking staying here. No! Get the fuck off me!" he jerked out of Nick's grasp as the other man tried to calm him down. Zak sat his camera down, viciously rubbing at his eyes, knowing full well the image would forever be burned into his memory.  
"Aaron," Zak spoke with a quiet authority that made the other two men pause, both breathing heavily.  
"We're not here to be comfortable. We're here to figure out what's going on in this house. That... disgusting... abomination in that chapel is part of the equation. We don't run. We don't back down. Especially not from shit as fucked up as this!" Zak didn't realize he had been yelling until he heard his own voice echoing off of the high ceilings of the left wing.

"There is one more place to see, if you boys are still interested," the caretaker said, making all three of them jump. Zak cracked his neck twice before he picked up his camera, turning it on again.  
"Lead the way."

The fourth spot was the master bedroom of Emmet Velasquez. It was nearly as big as Zak's apartment, complete with a lavished four-poster bed, a library, a bar, and a bathroom with a bathtub big enough to fit four people. All the decorations seemed to be fake, as if there was never any real thought behind any of it. It was artificial, made to look like something human could reside here, but was, in reality, just a facade. It was a mask to hide the true monster that inhabited the building. It was a creature that infested the very walls, was as much of the house as the beams and tiles. The caretaker informed them that room hosted many of Velasquez's orgies, where unsuspecting women as well as men were often drugged and raped repeatedly by Velasquez and his loyal cult of followers. He also hinted that it was the room where the body of a young woman by the name of Eleanor was supposedly stabbed to death. The three listened as politely as they could, anxious to leave the room and get back downstairs.

Zak had seen the caretaker to the door.  
"You'll be here with a towing service at sunrise," he didn't so much ask as demand. The caretaker nodded slowly, a long smile stretching his thin, cracked lips.  
"Yes, sir, and I'm so sorry that I won't be of any help to you during the night. But I do promise to be here as soon as the day breaks."  
"Thank you," Zak said without feeling. He watched the caretaker leave, shutting the large oak doors behind him. The tell-tale sound of the lock and key seemed to resonate inside of Zak's head. Then there was silence. Zak took a deep breath before returning to Aaron and Nick in the parlor.

Zak stood in the archway, looking at his friends, who only returned his gaze, saying nothing. They were afraid, all of them. They'd been to countless haunted houses and supposed sites of satanic activity, but this was so very different. Zak felt the primal fear creep into his spine, a fear that chanted run, run, run, over and over in the back of his mind. But he steeled his nerves, puffed up his chest, and vowed to get through the night.  
"Let's get to work."


	2. All Along the Watchtower

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter two! A much longer chunk for you guys. Nothing brings me more joy than good, old-fashioned Frienemies.
> 
> Again, the characters of Zak, Nick, and Aaron are based on their real life counterparts and in no way reflect their views or beliefs. I just obsessively watched the show enough to get a feel for their speech patterns and mannerisms. 
> 
> This work is inspired by/based on "Hell House" by Richard Matheson. Go read it!
> 
> If you catch any typos, shoot me a message with the afflicted sentence. I'm self-revising this one, so it's a bit hard to catch everything sometimes. 
> 
> Happy reading!

September 23  
8:57 pm

The Impala struggled to make it up the steep, winding gravel road, engine groaning and protesting.  
"Come on, Baby, just a little further..." Dean cooed.  
"I'm not so sure about this, Dean. This map is ancient..." Sam said from the passenger seat. "As far as I can tell, it hasn't been updated since the early nineteen hundreds. We may be five minutes away, or an hour."  
"Shut up, Sam, you're upsetting her," Dean growled, patting his car's dashboard. As if on cue, the massive house appeared before them, barely visible through the thick fog and the glare of the Impala's headlights. Dean pulled off to the side of the road and killed the engine.  
"Alright, let's go burn a corpse," Dean said with a thin smile.  
"Assuming that it's a ghost causing all this trouble..."

A few weeks back, Sam and Dean had gotten a call from Bobby about the death of a few hunters. Unfortunately, this was nothing new, but Bobby sounded shaken at the idea of their failure.  
"These weren't trigger-happy amateurs we're talking about, here," he had grumbled, "They were experienced hunters with ten, twenty years under their belts." It was enough to grab the brother’s attention.

Dean popped the trunk of the Impala, beginning to fill his rucksack with the standard de-ghosting equipment. Sam had walked ahead a ways, surveying the area.  
"Dean..." he called through the mist. Dean slammed the trunk and trotted over to where his brother was standing.  
"What?" he snapped. Sam just pointed. A silver car sat in the driveway in front of the house, almost in brand new condition.  
"Someone else is here," Sam stated unnecessarily.  
"Who the hell else would be stupid enough to..." but Dean cut himself off mid sentence as, what appeared to be, flashlight beams flickered around inside the first floor of the building. Dean exhaled loudly, smacking his palm against his forehead.  
"It's either a bunch of horny, thrill-seeking teenagers or ‘paranormal enthusiasts’. Jesus. Don't these kids have any common sense?"  
"We'll have to deal with them before we can actually attempt to get anything done," Sam sighed, turning back to the car to fetch his own rucksack.

The two brothers walked side-by-side down the main path. Dean made a gagging noise as the smell of rotting vegetation from the ponds assaulted his nose.  
"God I hate this place already," he choked out, covering his nose and mouth with his sleeve. They stepped up onto the massive stoop, Sam reaching for the doors.  
"Uh..."  
"Are you kidding me right now? They actually locked themselves inside? What a bunch of idiots."  
"Come on, there's probably a staff entrance," Sam motioned for Dean to follow. "If the blueprints were accurate, the kitchen should be this way."

 

\- - - - -

 

September 23  
9:18 PM : Lockdown  
Main Parlor, Home Base

 

Aaron was running the standard equipment check in the parlor, the soft glow of their electric lanterns casting long shadows across the walls.  
"Man, I'll tell you what, I think this is the first place where I'm really, really not looking forward to turning the lights out. Can we make an exception?"  
"Fuck no, and we're not going to let this fucker bully us. We can’t let him have the power," Zak slammed his hand down definitively on the coffee table where he had been replacing the batteries in his own camera. Nick sighed audibly from the armchair next to them.

A loud bang in a distant part of the house immediately set them on high alert.  
"Fuck, fuck, okay, it's happening," Zak whispered, flipping on his camera and all but hopping over the small coffee table and skipping into the main hall, beginning to narrate.  
"Alright, so, we just heard a loud as bang coming from..." he was cut off by the sound of shattering glass.  
"What the fuck..." he breathed, freezing in place. It was coming from the kitchen.  
"Guys!" he yell-whispered. He heard the tell-tale jingle of Nick trotting up behind him.  
"Aaron cut the lights!" There was mild protest from the other room, but the lights flickered out after a few seconds. With nothing but the night vision of his camera to light the way, Zak began the long trek down the western wing towards the kitchen.

There were shuffling and muffled noises coming from inside the main preparation area, where Velasquez supposedly had people cooked alive. Zak swallowed thickly, pulse pounding in his ears, too caught up in the moment to even bother to narrate. Nick was close behind him, followed by Aaron. Their presence comforted him slightly, but not nearly enough to stop his hands from shaking. As they reached the door, they could hear what appeared to be mumbling; male voices. Lights flickered beneath the door.

Stealing his nerve, Zak lifted a hand to push the door open. Before he could even touch it, it swung open by itself, and all three men were blinded by a bright, swinging light. They jumped back, screaming, Aaron tripping backwards and falling.  
"Oh for Christ's sake..." a man said, lowering what Zak now realized was a flashlight. Two incredibly tall men stood in the doorway, one wearing a look of exasperation, the other concern.  
"Who the fuck are you?" Zak spat. "You're trespassing!"  
"Yeah, and you aren't?" the stockier one quipped without a second thought, walking out into the corridor and stepping over Aaron to make his way toward the main entrance hall.  
"We have permission to be here!" Nick protested. "And where the hell are you going?" He called after the man.  
"I'm doing my fucking job, come on Sammy."

The other man gave them all apologetic looks.  
"You guys really shouldn't be here," he said softly. "It's extremely dangerous." Zak scoffed.  
"Yeah, sure, then why exactly are you two here?" he pressed, turning off his camera and crossing his arms, subconsciously flexing his biceps and puffing his chest. Which was ridiculous because the man in front of him stood at least a foot taller than him.  
"We're hunters, Dean, stop, they deserve an explanation," the taller man called down the hall.  
"My ass!" was the echoing response.  
"Hunters? Well, fuck me, man, I had no idea it was open season," Aaron growled dusting off his pants. The taller man looked annoyed and nervous.  
"No, we hunt ghosts. Demons. Witches. That kind of stuff. And there is something very evil and very powerful in this house. You guys need to get out as soon as possible." Zak barked a laugh.  
"Right, and, uh, you're going to what. Kill the ghosts?" The other man had returned.  
"We find the corpse, we salt it, we burn it. No more ghosties. If you're good boys we might even give you our autographs. But for now, you need to scram."

Zak turned to the other man, arms still crossed.  
"I'm gonna ask again, who the hell are you people?" The taller man sighed.  
"I'm Sam, and this is my brother, Dean. We've been hunting these kinds of things for a while."  
"We find the things that go bump in the night, and we gank their asses," Dean added, earning an eye-roll from Nick.

"Alright, but you guys are still trespassing. The caretaker will be back at dawn, and he'll definitely call the police..." Aaron tried to reason.  
"Well, we aren't planning to stay until dawn," Dean said grimly.  
"Listen, Velazquez family had a plot on the grounds. His body may still be somewhere in the house or on the grounds. We need to find the body, salt it, and burn it. This is a dangerous spirit."  
"First of all, desecrating some dude’s corpse like that is incredibly fucked up and I seriously hope you guys are joking. And, secondly, you keep saying that he’s a dangerous spirit, but what do you mean? What’s he done to prove that he’s dangerous?" Zak asked, all sarcasm gone, only genuine interest left in his voice. A cold breeze swept through the hallway, carrying the faintest whisper of a voice.  
"Son of a bitch," Dean muttered, shrugging the bag off of his back and pulling out what appeared to be a solid metal rod.  
"Listen, people were killed here. Our people. Hunters. Friends. They weren't amateurs either. He killed them, and if you guys don't leave now, he may kill you too," Sam pleaded, eyes imploring. “We don’t have time to explain more than that.”  
"Well we'd just love to get out of your hair, except for two things. One, we're locked in, and two, as soon as we pulled up to this hell hole of a house, our car's engine went kapooey. The creepy old caretaker is bringing a towing service in the morning." Zak explained, exasperated and trying not to show the fear that curled into his gut.

Sam and Dean looked at each other.  
"That's the second time you guys have said that," Sam pointed out.  
"Said what?"  
"Caretaker. This place... it doesn't have a caretaker. It hasn't in years. We looked into it."  
Zak was at a loss for words. He looked between Aaron and Nick, who both wore similar, petrified expressions.  
"Dude," was all Aaron could muster.  
“But… That’s ridiculous. He contacted us. He said he’d seen the show and thought the house would be perfect. He’s the one that let us know about…” Zak fumbled for words, cold realization and fear ripping through his body like lightning.   
"Whoever called you here, whoever you spoke with... he wasn't the caretaker," Sam said gravely.

A noise down the hall drew their attention back to the present.  
"Shit," Zak exhaled, running a cold, shaking hand over his face. "What do we do?"  
"First, we need to improve your home base," Dean supplied, hauling his rucksack back up onto one shoulder before setting off down the hallway. Sam followed him, motioning for the other three to follow. They re-entered the large parlor as Dean clicked their electric lanterns on, the fluorescent lights flickering to life once more.  
"None of this 'lights out' bullshit, got it? We use nice, strong lights in this business. I promise the creepy atmosphere is still there," Dean mocked.  
"Man, fuck you, I do not want to deal with your patronizing bull shit all night," Nick finally snapped, pointing a finger at Dean. "You may think you're top dog here, but we've been through our own shit, too. We’re not fucking amateurs. You guys are not the only two here that have had contact with the supernatural, okay?"  
"Oh lemme guess, you got a scratch on your leg? The number of the beast appeared on your left nut? Gimme a break."  
"Dean," Sam warned.  
"As a matter of fact, I was scratched. On my back," Zak pressed, stepping into Dean's space. "There were huge claw marks that didn't fade for days. They fucking hurt and they were real."  
"I was fucking possessed," Nick added, crossing his arms.  
"Well that's your own damn fault for not wearing protection," Dean snapped, and before Nick could ask if that was a condom joke, Dean had given each of them small necklaces with delicate, silver pendants in the shape of a pentagram.  
"And the claw marks? Very scary, but I raise you this," Dean smirked, pulling up his left sleeve to reveal a perfect outline of a handprint, still blister-red and raised. It earned a gasp and a few curses from the three men. Sam coughed to his right, pulling a large container of salt from his own backpack. Dean looked over at him.  
"What?" Sam shrugged.  
"I mean, does that one really count?"  
"Does it... of course it counts!" Dean yelled back, scandalized.  
"I'm just saying, it wasn't anything evil."  
"Angels, demons; tomato, potato," Dean dismissed with the wave of his hand.

Zak, Nick, and Aaron all exchanged looks.  
"Angels," Zak said dubiously.. Dean nodded, earning a slightly hysterical laugh from Zak.  
"This just keeps getting better and better," he sighed, running his hands over his face.  
"I'll say," Aaron added, watching with a cocked eyebrow as Sam created a large circumference of salt around them.  
"Actually, Dean, it might not be a bad idea to get Castiel involved in this. This may be over our heads," Sam offered.  
"What? No, this isn't over our heads. Besides, he's probably busy with... y'know, angel stuff."  
"So you guys also have an on-call angel. God, are you guys for real? Like, is this a joke? Are we being punked right now?" Zak threw his hands in the air, letting them fall and clap against his thighs loudly. “Bring out the hidden cameras, this has been hilarious. Ashton? You here buddy?”  
"I wish we were joking, but this is very real," Sam sighed, finishing off the salt circle. "Now stay inside the circle until we can get everything sorted out. Dean, call Castiel."  
"Why do I have to call him?" Dean asked, pulling several large knives and a can of gasoline out of his backpack.  
"Because he's your.... Because you're his favorite. He said it himself."  
"Aww, Sammy, don't be jealous," Dean cooed.  
"I'm not! I'm very happy for you two. I hope I have a relationship like that someday," Sam shot back with a crooked smile. A strangled look crept its way onto Dean's face and he proceeded to zip up his rucksack with excessive force.  
"Let's show the newbies the ropes first," he stalled.

"Okay, rule number one, don't go anywhere by yourself. We work in buddy systems for the rest of the night."  
"We're an uneven number," Nick pointed out.  
"Well if we get Cas's feathery butt down here we'll be a nice even six," Dean answered, curtly, causing the three men to exchange skeptical glances.  
"Rule number two," he started before anyone could protest, "don't take off those necklaces. They'll protect you from possession, and that's just one less thing we have to deal with tonight. Rule number three, salt is your best friend. Ghosts and demons can't cross a closed line of salt. Circles are best, but you can also put it across window sills, doorways, anything like that. Rule number four, you can temporarily fuck a ghost up with iron. Any kind of iron. I carry this," Dean twirled the metal pipe in his hands. "Use it like a baseball bat. There are probably some iron fire pokers around here somewhere, so we'll get you those." He paused, running his hand along the iron pensively. "And rule number five, don't get killed."  
"Simple enough," Aaron mumbled, as Nick swallowed audibly. Zak checked the battery on his camera.  
"And rule number six, no fucking filming!" Dean snapped, attempting to grab the camera out of Zak's hands.  
"Hey, fuck you, man, this is our livelihood. I'm going to fucking film whatever I want!" he protested, yanking the camera back out of Dean's grip.  
"Guys, guys, will you cut the crap?" Sam chastised, stepping in to push Dean away from Zak. "We're stuck here together, we might as well try to get along."

The men grumbled to themselves, dusting off their pants and shirts needlessly and scuffing their shoes across the floor.  
"Dean, get Cas," Sam ordered.  
"Bossy pants..." Dean mumbled, closing his eyes and clasping his hands together dramatically.  
"Oh... Castiel, angel of... Thursday," he started, laughing to himself. "We'd really appreciate some help about now, so, if you can, come and..." Aaron, Nick, and Zak all let out a shocked yelp in unison, nearly tumbling out of the salt circle as the figure of a man in a tan trench coat appeared out of thin air a few feet behind Dean.

"Hello, Dean. Sam," he said placidly in a deep, gravelly voice. "How can I be of service?"  
"Cas," Sam breathed, relief flooding his voice. "I really think we're in deep here. This house..." Cas visibly stiffened, looking around wildly for a moment.  
"This house is harboring a deep and powerful evil," he all but growled, stepping forward to push Sam and Dean behind him protectively as he looked out into the main hall.  
"Hey!" Dean protested weakly.  
"You all need to leave now," he said firmly. Zak, still having a hard time believing what he was seeing, found his voice none-the-less.  
"We can't," he said, taking a tentative step towards the angel. "We're trapped."  
"Nonsense," Castiel replied, placing two fingers to Zak's temple. Nothing happened. Castiel pulled his hand back, looked at it, then placed it against Zak's forehead again.  
"Strange," he mused, emotionlessly. "I can't fly."  
"Wh-what to you mean you can't fly?" Dean sputtered. "How the hell did you fly in here but now you can't fly out?"  
"Something is blocking me from doing so. Who are they?" He asked, motioning to the stunned men standing as far away from the angel as possible while still remaining in the circle of salt, save for Zak who still stood next to him.  
"Ghost Facer types," Sam supplied, and Castiel made a noise of understanding. He tilted his head slightly, eyes boring on Zak. He glanced back over at Dean, then back at Zak.  
"Interesting..." he mumbled, stepping forward and promptly entering Zak's personal space.  
"Whoa, hey, buddy, angel or not that's a little close for comfort," Zak laughed nervously, take a small step back.  
"Your soul," Castiel almost whispered, causing Zak's hair to stand on end.  
"W-what about it?" he stuttered. Cas studied him a moment longer.  
"It's... familiar." He quickly turned to Dean, stepping over and pulling him to stand beside Zak.  
"Dude, Cas, what are you doing?"  
"Interesting..." Cas repeated. "I don't see this often..." he paused, eyes darting between Zak and Dean's chests. "But it appears as though your souls are... I suppose, one might say, they are twins."  
"Fuck off," Zak said immediately with a laughing disbelief in his voice, stepping away from Dean.  
"This guy?" Dean sputtered, jabbing a thumb towards Zak. "Mr. Ghost Facers, Mr. I've-been-scratched-by-a-demon-and-it-kind-of-hurt? Now don't get me wrong, I trust you with my damn life Cas, but that's some bullshit."  
"Yeah, this guy is a total ass hole," Zak butt in, earning a scathing look from Dean.  
"You're both ass holes, if you ask me," Sam muttered, eliciting a high pitched giggle from Aaron.  
"Father created all of the souls in existence in the Beginning. But with the, I suppose you would call it The Big Bang, many souls were split. It appears you both share a part of the same soul. It’s not very common. Very interesting," Cas said again, as though he were studying a museum exhibit. "You two have the capability to be either bitter enemies, or form an incredibly strong bond."  
"Are you telling me I'm soul-mates with this pointy-haired ass hat?" Dean clarified, earning an offended noise from Zak.  
"Dude, you don't even know me! What's your deal?"  
"I know your type!” He whirled on him. “You're nosy little brats who think it's fun to play with ghosts, but it's not fun. It's dangerous and it kills people.” He jabbed a finger into Zak’s chest. “It kills people you love and you try to protect them constantly, but you can't protect them," Dean huffed breathlessly, eyes ghosting over Sam and Cas. He swallowed. "And they die, and you have to watch them die." He wiped his sleeve across his nose. "Does that sound like fun?"

Before Zak could answer, a noise from the hall drew their attention back to their present predicament. Loud resounding, disembodied footsteps were slowly making their way down the main staircase.  
"We need to leave. We need to get out of here," Cas chanted.  
"No!" Zak and Dean said simultaneously, both giving the other an annoyed look.  
"We have to gank this son of a bitch," Dean said lowly.  
"We don't run. We stand up to these spirits. We don't let them control us," Zak added. Castiel looked desperate.  
"I don't know how to control this kind of spirit," he exhaled, looking more exhausted than usual. "I've never felt a human soul possess this much rage before. This much... hatred. And if I can't fly, then it is also possible that I cannot access my Grace at all."  
"Cas you've gone hunting with us before. It'll just be like those times," Sam assured, placing a solid hand on the angel's shoulder. "There are six of us. If we work together as a team, stay level headed," he stopped and looked pointedly at Dean and Zak for added emphasis, "then I know we can figure this out."

Sam turned to address Aaron and Nick as well.  
"There is a corpse here. The corpse of Emmet Velasquez. We need to find the body, salt it, and burn it. It sounds simple enough, but Velasquez is going to try his damndest to stop us at every turn. Our friends gave their lives to try and end this man's reign of terror, and I need to know that you all are aware of what is at stake here." He paused to look each person in the eye.  
"This is like no other case we've ever had. This is big. Big and mean. And I'm sorry that you've been dragged into it, but maybe it's a good thing. Maybe it was fate that you all ended up here on the same night as us. Because, at this point, we need all the help we can get."

There was silence following Sam's monologue, interrupted only by Dean mumbling about how they would have been fine.  
"So what do you need us to do?" Nick asked, voice deceptively confident. Sam nodded to him; a silent thanks.  
"First we need to split up into groups of three to start out. I don't trust splitting us into groups of two. Too easy to get separated." Sam paused, a sudden flush coming over his face.  
"I'm... sorry, but we never actually got any of your names."  
"I'm Zak, and this is Nick and the one with less hair is Aaron. We do a show. It's called, um, Ghost Adventures," he muttered, feeling stupid saying out loud to actual ghost hunters. Dean let out a chuckle.  
"Unbelievable," he mumbled, picking up his metal pipe and twirling it around in his hand.  
"Alright, it's nice to meet you all. Again, I'm Sam, my jerk of a brother is Dean, and Castiel is an angel of the Lord who somehow manages to put up with us," Sam said with a self-deprecating laugh.

"Our plan of action is simple. Actually carrying it out is going to be the hard part. These grounds are huge, and something tells me that Velazquez's body isn't going to be easy to find." Off to Sam's left, Aaron raised a finger.  
"Isn't there like...a giant crypt somewhere behind the house? Wouldn't Velazquez be buried there?" Sam and Dean looked at each other.  
"Well, we hope so, but something tells me that probably won't be the case." Sam took a breath, turning to his own rucksack.  
"So I have a pretty old map of the grounds, probably made around the time Velazquez still lived here. Combined with my own research about the events held by Velazquez in this house, I'm lead to believe there may be secret rooms that aren't indicated on the map. Dean, I want you to take Zak and Cas and actually go through the house and see if you can find any compartments, false walls, anything."  
"Oh come on."  
"Is this a joke?" Dean and Zak protested at the same time. Sam slammed a hand down on the table.  
"Look, you two have to get along for one night. One night. Then you never have to speak to each other again. I sure as hell don't care one way or the other. But Cas said you two have the ability to work well together, so put away those giant egos and do work. I'm going to go with Nick and Aaron out onto the grounds to inspect the crypt. Okay?"

Dean continued to grumble, but Zak gave a determined nod, glancing towards Castiel.  
"And you don't have your powers anymore?" Zak asked tentatively, feeling rather rude.  
"I am not sure," Cas exhaled. "Something is..." He looked up suddenly, as if a light bulb had gone off. Promptly the angel turned and strode out of the circle of salt.  
"Cas!" Dean called, scooping up his bag and running after him into the main foyer.  
"I guess we're starting," Zak said jokingly, trying to ignore the twist of fear in his gut. He strode over to Nick and Aaron, placing a hand on each of their shoulders.  
"Be safe tonight. If you find anything or need any help at all, call for me. I'll take one walkie, and you guys take the other. Pray that they work. Don't get killed. And try to record some stuff." It was a lame speech, but the two other men nodded in unison before gathering their own supplies. Taking a deep breath, Zak stepped out of the circle and walked as confidently as he could into the main hall to join Dean and Cas.

"Just as I suspected," Cas said to Dean as Zak approached the two men.  
"What?"  
"It's a sigil. But a very rare one at that," Cas explained, eyes focusing just above the large oak doors that served as the main entrance. Zak squinted, but couldn't see anything.  
"So what kind is it?" Dean asked, pulling a small knife out of his pocket.  
"It's... Well, it’s not dissimilar to a devil's trap, or even a ring of burning holy oil, but it carves out an entire space, not just a small circle. It makes it so that I can enter the building but cannot leave. I have never been subjected to this before. Very few even know of its existence."  
"Well can I scratch through it? Give you your wings back?" Dean pressed, twirling the knife once in his hand. Cas shook his head.  
"I'm afraid not. Finding Velazquez may be the only way to destroy it. It's inherently linked to the soul of whoever cast it. It is a very powerful sigil. Very tricky. He was a foolishly brave man to attempt to use it. But it means he may be more powerful than we originally thought."

Zak spun around suddenly, absolutely positive that he just heard someone say his name at the top of the stairs.  
"Guys?" he called out automatically, but Sam had taken Nick and Aaron down the eastern corridor that lead to the gardens. He swallowed.  
"What is it?" Dean asked, stepping up beside him.  
"I swear to G-..." he glanced at Castiel. "I swear I just heard someone call my name. It was a man's voice for sure."  
"Velasquez," Dean growled. "Come on, let's find this asshole."

Zak looked to Cas one last time, hoping his expression didn't betray how helpless and terrified he felt. The angel smiled softly at him before following Dean up the giant marble staircase. The three of them ascended in silence, footsteps echoing heavily off of the high, vaulted ceiling of the main hall. At the top of the steps, a massive painting of a pastoral scene and a village of dancing people hung in a large, gilded frame.  
"These guys are way too happy to be in this place," Zak commented, earning an airy laugh of agreement from Dean.  
"Okay, left or right?" he asked, turning back around to face Cas and Zak. They all looked thoughtfully in one direction, then the other. Then Zak gasped.  
"Dude," he stumbled backwards slightly. "This huge blast of cold air just went right through me," he exclaimed, holding out his arms to present the intense gooseflesh that has formed. "It came from the left and just... completely engulfed my body."  
"What? I didn't feel anything..." Dean scoffed, spinning around in place to shine his flashlight in various dark corners.  
"Zak is right, there is something drawing us in that direction, whether to mislead us or otherwise I'm not sure." Cas gave Zak a thoughtful look. "You appear to be very sensitive to energy fields. That is a gift." Zak felt his face go warm. Complements from an Angel of The Lord, now that was something to write home about.  
"Hey, I'm sensitive," Dean huffed, adjusting his bag and walking down the hall.

The house seemed unnaturally silent, as if a thick blanket had been stretched overtop of them, muffling the sounds of their feet. Zak unconsciously rubbed the back of his neck, unable to shake the feeling of being watched. Dean began to knock on random walls, listening for hollow noises.  
"Hey, here's another staircase," Dean called out, pushing an already cracked door open further to reveal a tight, iron staircase that spiraled both upwards and downwards into darkness.  
"There's a third level?" Zak asked, attempting to peek around Dean's shoulders. "The caretaker, or whoever that creepy guy was, never mentioned a third level."  
"Yeah, apparently there is. Let's go," Dean pushed forward, beginning to ascend the staircase.  
"Wait, I don't think..."  
"Just, come on," Dean cut Zak off. Zak looked back to Castiel with a sigh.  
"Is he always like this?" he asked, jabbing his thumb over his shoulder.  
"Yes. You get used to it," Cas said in a completely serious tone and Zak couldn't help but laugh. It was the first joke he'd heard come out of the angel.  
"Hey! I can hear you, Cas, you asshole!" Dean called from somewhere above him, but Zak detected a hint of fondness in his voice. He began to wonder what exactly had brought two, seemingly ordinary human guys into alliance with an angel. And why did said angel wear a trench coat? Somewhat reluctantly, he began to climb the staircase after Dean, Cas following closely behind him.


	3. Superstition

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING/POSSIBLE TRIGGER: This chapter contains a bit of rapey/homophobic language, pretty strong cursing, and some light gore. Lots of fun! So approach with educated caution.

September 23  
10:22 PM  
East Gardens

 

A thick wall of fog had steadily rolled in over the top of the mountain in the wake of the rain swallowing the grounds and surrounding forests. It clung greedily to Sam's hair and temples to the point that small droplets formed at the base of his hair. The wet grass soaked into the bottom of his pant legs as he led the way across the grounds. Nick and Aaron trailed slightly behind him, both glancing nervously from left to right as they trudged along. It wasn’t a particularly warm night, and the added wetness in the air caused an unshakable chill to settle into their bones. It was unnaturally quiet save for the soft shuffle or squish of their feet against the soggy earth.  
“I do like that you guys just sort of busted through a window. Kind of bad ass…” Aaron mused aloud, receiving an incredulous look from Nick.  
“Well, the front doors were bolted shut for some reason…” Sam teased in a flat voice. “What’s up with that, by the way?”  
“Well, uh…” Nick cleared his throat. “It kind of started way back with our first gig. It was more of a safety precaution than anything, like making sure nobody else came on the grounds while we were there, but then it kind of turned into a cool gimmick. Y’know, ‘no escape’ and all that.”  
“But usually there’s at least one or two ways for us to get out,” Aaron added as he stepped into a half-hidden puddle.  
“Damn it,” he cursed, shaking his leg unnecessarily hard in an attempt to get the water off.  
“Interesting,” Sam said more to himself than anyone else. They continued on in silence for a while, flashlights reflecting off the white sheets of fog that hung low to the ground, bouncing off of dead or dying trees and shrubbery.  
“I thought being outside of that damn place would make me feel better, but it doesn’t. It’s just as fucking creepy out here,” Aaron proclaimed with a shudder. 

“There,” Sam pointed to a small, fenced off area up ahead, shrouded in mist. Even through the haze, the three could make out the different shapes of various headstones, from the more standard, half-rounded rectangle, to elaborate obelisks and angels. In the center of the modest smattering of gravestones stood a large crypt. As they drew closer, the excessive details of the tomb became more and more clear, making the identity of the intended owner quite obvious. Two, thick, fluted columns with scrolled volutes at their tops stood before a filigreed steel door flanked by two stained glass windows. Gargoyles perched on either side of the cornice that ran around the top, baring their teeth at the three approaching men. The whole thing had a thin layer of moss and grime running through its crevices and clouding its corners, giving it an unkempt appearance.  
“I think this is our guy,” Sam announced, setting his rucksack down to pull out an iron crowbar.  
“Damn, you guys don’t fuck around,” Nick whistled.  
“It’s our job,” Sam replied grimly before striking the lock. 

 

\- - - - -

 

September 23  
10:20 PM  
Third Floor, Attic

 

It turned out that the third floor functioned as more of an attic than anything else. Large objects sat covered with dusty sheets, all ghosts in their own right. Dean cautiously lifted one of the sheets to peek beneath, revealing an old, musty armchair from what looked like the Victorian period. Zak shuffled off to the left behind him, his curiosity piqued by an old chest of drawers.  
“I guess even evil guys run out of space for all their crap eventually,” Dean muttered, earning a laugh from Zak, who slid open the top drawer of the chest, earning a grating, wood-on-wood squeak that he immediately regretted. He shut it quickly, finding nothing of interest inside.  
“This is weird. After hearing all the stories, I kept forgetting that this guy was actually a human. A human with a shit ton of excess furniture.”  
“I hear that…”  
"Bit of a pack rat, if you ask me. I mean look at all this worthless shit." Zak kicked one of four identical trunks for emphasis. It responded with a dull, unmoving thud, clearly packed to the brim with god knew what.

Cas remained silent behind them, standing perfectly still as his eyes scanned the large, spacious room. Zak turned to look at him.  
“Everything good, Cas?” It was the first time he’d said the angels name out loud, and the nickname felt foreign on his tongue, like he hadn’t earned the right to use it. Cas nodded slowly.  
“I was simply taking in the environment. Trying to access what little bit of Grace I can still feel. It’s… difficult,” he confessed, eyes dropping to the floor. “I can still feel the energy of the house, and the energy of Velasquez’s soul, but it’s almost impossible to pinpoint. I will admit, it is very… frustrating.” 

At that, Zak couldn’t help but laugh a little. An angel experiencing frustration was incredibly endearing. A loud smashing noise at the other end of the attic quickly jolted him back into reality, prompting a string of curses.  
“Is that you, you bastard?” Zak yelled, almost out of habit, earning an incredulous look from Dean.  
“Just stay there for a minute,” he instructed, gingerly walking in the direction of the noise.  
“Fuck that,” Zak protested, taking a wide arc to Dean’s left as he also began to move towards the source of the crash. “Cas, you take the right hand side.”  
“Don’t give him orders! We’re the professionals, we should give you orders. Cas, don’t move!” Dean shot back. Castiel just blinked at both of them.  
“Give me some fucking credit!” Zak yelled as they both continued to move towards the far end of the room. “This isn’t my first rodeo!”  
“Oh, well excuse me, Tex, I was under the impression that you have absolutely no idea how to actually get rid of a ghost. You just go around taunting them into moving marbles across the floor.”  
“First of all…” Zak began, before a large cracking noise beneath his feet made all the blood drain from his face. With other sickening crack, the floor gave way beneath him, sending him plummeting down into the darkness below. He heard both Dean and Cas call his name over his own screams as the attic disappeared. 

He hit the ground hard, but it didn’t hurt. In fact, he bounced. Twice. After a moment of deep breathing, effectively staving away an asthma attack, he managed to get his bearings. He had landed on a bed, of all things. There was still a ringing in his ears and his vision pulsated in the darkness as the blood pumped furiously through his body. After a moment he could hear his name being called with a fair amount of desperation.  
“I’m…o-okay,” he said, hoping it was loud enough. He heard scuffling above him and looked up at the massive hole in the ceiling. Two flashlights were shining down on him.  
“Are you hurt?” That was Cas.  
“Is that a bed?” And that was Dean.  
“No, I think I'm fine. A few scrapes maybe... and yeah, it’s a bed,” Zak laughed, sounding hysterical to his own ears. “Lucky break?”  
“Stay where you are! We’ll come to you,” Dean ordered, and the flashlights promptly left, plunging Zak into a palpable darkness. He could feel a stinging sensation on his right calf and down his forearm. He gingerly touched the areas to find them raw and wet. He sighed, hands still shaking. He fumbled around on the bed for a moment and panicked slightly when he couldn’t find his bag or his walkie-talkie. He cursed, blindly shoving the debris that had fallen with him off of the bed as he scooted to its edge. He groped for a bedside table, a lamp, anything. He found a drawer and pulled it open, fishing around inside. To his disbelief, he found what appeared to be a small box of matches among other oddly shaped objects. He shook it to confirm. The tell-tale sound of small sticks tumbling over one another gave him a good deal of relief. 

There were no longer footsteps above him, meaning Dean and Cas were probably only seconds away. He pulled one match out of the sliding box and struck it against the side. The flame burst to life at the end of the stick, dimly illuminating his surroundings. As he shielded the flame from his face to get a good look at the room, his blood went cold. He was in Velasquez’s bedroom. The master suite. A sudden burst of wind extinguished his match. He scrambled backwards to press against the headboard, breathing becoming labored again. Waves of nausea washed over his body as he attempted to calm himself down. He lit another match as quickly as he good with clumsy, shaking fingers and held it aloft. Everything seemed to crawl with movement in the corners of his vision, writhing and squirming in the periphery, settling into a mocking stillness when he focused there. Coldness settled over the room, Zak’s quick breaths turning into puffs of steam. He wasn’t alone. 

Pain irrupted at the tips of his fingers, his match having burned down while he was distracted. He hissed and automatically threw it across the room, the small flame immediately extinguishing as it hit the floor, and he found himself once again in complete darkness. The silence of the house consumed him, and he sat, frozen in fear, an illogical part of his brain telling him that, so long as he remained perfectly still, he would be safe from harm. 

Noises from across the room caught his attention. A small light that he hadn’t noticed before was leaking out from beneath a tall, narrow door, spilling across the dark, wooden floor and Persian rugs. The sound of splashing water reached his ears and he began to slowly crawl towards the foot of the bed, as if entranced. His feet moved on their own accord as he slowly began to walk across the room. It was as if he was swimming through water, arms heavy and eyes clouded. He stood before the door, the sounds of water more clear now. It was as if someone was taking a bath. Vaguely, Zak remembered back to the tour of the house and realized this was the master bath. Slowly he reached up and turned the doorknob, opening the door outwards. 

The bathroom was illuminated by the soft glow of candles that lined the sinks and counters. At the end of the long white-tiled room sat a figure in the full bathtub. A woman. She turned to look at him, continuing to wash her arms.  
“What are you doing here?” he asked, shocked by the sound of his own voice. She smiled before sinking down, submerging herself under the water. Zak was frozen in place as she rose, completely naked from the tub. Her skin glistened, small rivulets of water running down the sides of her neck, across her breasts, and down her legs, dark hair sticking to her shoulders. Her eyes were so dark that they nearly seemed black in the dim light of the candles, but glistened wetly, reflecting the quivering flames. She took a tentative step out of the tub, moving towards Zak. 

“You need to be cleaned,” she spoke, voice like a fading echo. “So dirty..." She looked him up and down. "Do you feel dirty, Zak?”  
“What?” he breathed, slowly backing away. The door closed behind him with a slam. His back hit the solid oak with a thud.  
“How do you know my name? Are… are you Eleanor?” he asked, shaking uncontrollably. She nodded once, continuing her slow approach.  
“I’m sorry… what they did to you. I’m so sorry.” His voice wavered. Eleanor only laughed, eyebrows crinkling with confusion.  
“Sorry? I am not sorry. They set me free,” she replied, inches from Zak’s face. “You could be free, as well,” she breathed across his lips, pressing her naked body flush against his. The dampness of her breasts soaked through his shirt as her hips pressed into the front of his pants, his cock twitching involuntarily. "Free from all the pressures of the world. All expectations. Free to be exactly what you are, deep inside. What are you, Zak? Deep inside?"  
“I’m….” he tried, swallowing thickly. She trailed a wet finger down his face, across his lips, slipping it inside his mouth to press firmly against his tongue. The moan escaped his mouth before he could stop it. She smiled against his face, leaning in to bite his earlobe.  
“You’re a little _faggot_ ,” she whispered in his ear, yanking her finger out of his mouth and violently throwing him down onto the floor by his neck. Zak let out a yelp, the back of his head smacking against the cold tile floor, causing star bursts to appear before his eyes.He tried to turn away, to curl into a protective ball, but a foot stopped him, pressing him down with unimaginable force against the cold tiles.  
“Isn’t that right, Zak?” her voice was now overlapped with a deep inhuman, growl. “Just a little cock sucker, aren’t you? Look at that mouth,” she grinned wickedly, her face slowly approaching his on a long, snaking neck. “It’s just begging to be fucked, to be stuffed with a big, thick cock.” She laughed, low and demonic, sticking out a long, forked tongue to lick a sticky line up his face. Her torso began to ooze thick, red blood from a multitude of stabs that had suddenly appeared across her chest and stomach, dripping down and soaking into Zak’s shirt. He felt his airways constrict with the threat of an oncoming attack, struggling to breath under the crushing weight of her foot and the sickly sweet smell of blood.

“Oh and the noises you’d make. Such a slut, I can see it. Begging for it. Begging to be fucked. How delicious. A righteous man on his knees, on all fours, taking a nice hard pounding from a fat, juicy prick. You’d like that, wouldn’t you? Fucked into oblivion, coming until you’re completely devoured by your own self-loathing, unable to deny that white-hot pleasure you’ve craved for so long. Haven’t you Zak? You think about it at night, don’t you. When you’re all alone and it’s just you and your little prick together in bed. Craving to be filled, fucking yourself on your own fingers.” Her mouth was right beside his ear, growling every filthy word into it with brutal truth and a sharp finality.  
“S-stop it,” Zak whimpered, squeezing his eyes closed as he futilely attempted to remove the foot from his chest and jerk away from the thing’s mouth. The thing laughed above him, neck receding back to its normal position. She opened her mouth to say something else, but jerked her head up suddenly. With a knowing smile and a booming cackle, she quickly disappeared into thin air in a rush of smoke. The echo of her final outcry bounced off the tiled walls Zak felt the door behind him swing open, Dean frantically calling his name. 

Zak’s breath came in labored wheezes as he desperately clawed at his throat. The room was pitch black. There was no trace of candles having ever been there.  
“Hey, hey, Zak, hey, calm down,” Dean attempted to soothe, setting his flashlight on the floor as he bent down to kneel next to Zak, pulling him up into a sitting position against the doorframe.  
“Can’t…. breathe…” Zak gasped, panic rising in his chest.  
“Hey, it’s all good buddy, you’re safe, I got your back,” Dean chanted, absently running a hand across Zak’s shoulders. Dean’s touch was awkward and rough, but soothing, like a long-time friend who’d forgotten how to give good hugs. Zak closed his eyes and tried to focus his attention on his lungs, willing them to open, widen, expand. Finally, after several long minutes of deep breathing, his breath evened out and he was able to speak clearly.  
“What… what was that?” Zak asked, ashamed at the crack in his voice. Dean’s mouth had settled into a thin line, hand tightening around Zak’s shoulder.  
“Did you see something?” Dean’s eyes trailed down to Zak’s still heaving chest. Zak followed his gaze and noticed that his shirt was no longer wet or covered in blood.  
“I think it was Velasquez. I think he was using the appearance of Eleanor…” Zak pressed, attempting to stand. He felt unreal, like he was aware he was dreaming, but couldn’t wake himself up. _I believe I have finally gone insane_ , he thought with a twist of hysteria in his gut.  
“Whoa, stay down for a minute, you were in a bad place,” Dean chastised, pressing gently against Zak’s shoulder to settle him back against the doorframe. “Who’s Eleanor?”  
“She was…” he swallowed dryly, taking a moment to carefully bury all the horrid things the woman had said to him in that dark, twisted voice. “She was one of his victims. She was… supposedly stabbed to death, but they never found her body, only her blood.”  
“Jesus…” Dean cursed, looking off into the distance.  
“I think he may feed off of the trapped energy of the people who died here. I think he's using their... souls. Almost like batteries.  
"That's impossible," Dean dismissed. "That would mean he would have to keep all of their bodies around as well."  
"Well, there is a lot of space in this house." Zak's mind wandered back momentarily to one of the trunks he'd kicked in the attic and shivered.  
"Where’s Cas?” he asked, suddenly aware of the angel’s absence. Dean rose to his feet, holding out a hand to help Zak up as well. He wearily managed to rise, swaying slightly, unconsciously steadying himself with a firm grasp of Dean’s arm.  
“The bastard disappeared on me. If Velasquez is trying to split us up, he’s doing a damn good job.”

“Dean,” Zak breathed, realizing that, within the past minute, they had both said each other’s name for the first time that night. It felt familiar, reassuring. “Have I gone crazy?”  
“Well you sure screamed like a crazy person in there,” Dean replied with a lighthearted chuckle, his expression reflecting anything but lightheartedness. Zak sighed heavily, finally releasing his grip on Dean’s arm.  
“I… just… it seemed so real. But you didn’t hear any of it?” he pressed, feeling frantic, desperate even. Dean shifted awkwardly where he stood, as if attempting to slide away from Zak’s imploring gaze.  
“Hey, let’s talk it over later. After this is all said and done. At a bar, preferably, with a few strong drinks. I'll even buy you one, but right now we need to stay focused, okay? Let’s just find Cas and gank this bastard,” he said with a friendly slap on the back. It knocked the breath from Zak’s chest for a moment, but he nodded and gave Dean a weary smile.


	4. Ain't No Grave

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A short-ish chapter. Some depictions of violence and blood and stuff. But hopefully, dear reader, you expected that by now.  
> As with the last few chapters, if you see any mistakes, message me! Self-betaing is a hard business.

September 23  
10:34 PM  
Velasquez’s Crypt

With one final shove by all three of the men, the large stone door behind the steel barrier gave way. Aaron nearly lost his balance and fell into a pile of dead leaves. The smell that rolled out of the tomb left them all gagging.  
“Oh what in the actual fuck,” Nick coughed, covering his mouth and nose with his sleeve.  
“I’m gonna hurl,” Aaron squeezed out before running a few feet away to catch his breath.  
“What in the world…?” Sam mused, seemingly less affected by the awful stench. “We shouldn’t be smelling this kind of decay if Velasquez died over sixty years ago.” He stepped into the tomb, walking over to the large slab of stone in the center. Nick shook his head violently.  
“Come on, bro, do _not_ open that. If it smells this bad with it closed I think we might actually die…”  
“We have no choice,” Sam cut him off, running a hand across the top. Without a second thought, he began pushing the heavy lid off the top of the thick, marble sarcophagus.  
“A little help…?” he heaved. Nick cursed loudly before jumping over beside him to throw his weight against the slab. With one final shove, the top fell to the floor, cracking in half. Nick jumped back, turning around to walk to the far wall, entirely unprepared to see a rotten, decaying body.  
“What the…” Sam exclaimed, shining his flashlight into the coffin. “It’s… it’s…” Nick’s stood for a moment, waiting for Sam to finish his sentence, sighed loudly, and shuffled back across the room to gaze tentatively over the edge.  
“It’s empty,” he finished for Sam, scratching his head in confusion. And so it was. Sam’s flashlight bounced off of the bare corners of the marble, only illuminating a few clumps of dirt and leaves.  
“That makes no sense,” Sam sputtered. “But it looks like maybe his body was moved, see? There are scratch marks along the edges from where the coffin scraped against the sides.”

Aaron had regained his composure and now stood in the doorway, face a sickly shade of green. Nick shook his head, baffled.  
“So if they moved the fucker’s body, where’s that smell coming from?” 

 

\- - - - -

 

September 23  
10:42 PM  
Second Floor, Left Wing

“Cas!” Dean shouted, the beam of his flashlight sweeping across the length of the hall. “Where are you, man?” Zak trailed behind him, unable to keep his hands from trembling. His own flashlight cast dynamic, dancing shadows across the walls and he, once again, got the feeling that they weren’t alone. His mind inevitably wandered back to his encounter in the bathroom. Dean hadn’t seen any of it, but said he heard Zak screaming. Zak didn’t remember having screamed at all… Was he the one saying all those filthy things? Did he say them out loud? Was his fucked up repressed subconscious finally catching up to him? He pushed the thought down even deeper, shaking his head.  
“Cas?” he called out feebly, simply needing to hear the sound of his own voice.  
“CAS!” Dean boomed, drowning him out. A small noise at the end of the hall made both of them pick up their steps, jogging, then full out running to the large set of double doors at the corridor’s end. Zak felt his own sanity slip once more, swearing that the door wasn’t getting any closer. He almost laughed, because it was pretty cliché: the receding door. He may have actually laughed, because Dean threw a concerned look over his shoulder. 

The doors stopped receding, and the palms of Dean’s hands collided with their solid mass with a resounding slap that echoed through the house. They swung open willingly, almost mocking the force with which Dean used against them. Cas stood with his back to them several feet away, overlooking a large room below.  
“Cas!” Dean heaved a grateful sigh, striding towards him. “Come on, buddy, we need to…” Dean stopped his sentence short, hand freezing in mid air where it went to grab Cas’s shoulder. His mouth flapped dumbly, no words able to escape.  
“Oh no,” Zak murmured to himself, backing away slowly. It was the Chapel. Cas stood frozen at the edge of the balcony overlooking the sick, twisted mockery of his Father’s house.  
“What…” Dean whispered, hand grabbing futilely at his iron rod. “What kind of hell is this?”  
“This was Velasquez’s private chapel,” Zak answered hoarsely, surprised he was even able to find his voice. Dean’s hand landed solidly on Cas’s shoulder, trying to pull him away from edge of the balcony. Cas was practically a statue, unmoving.  
“My Father gave his children the capacity for free will, knowing that many would use it to slander and degrade Him... but never, in all of my years of existence,” he swallowed, “have I ever seen such an _insidious_ manifestation of the human spirit. ”

“I feel as if these walls… there’s something… just behind them. It’s… so incredibly dark. So tainted. How…? How could this happen to a… a human?”

Zak’s feet were still moving backwards towards the door.  
“We have to get out of here,” he insisted. Dean nodded, eyes darting between Cas and Zak, avoiding looking at the room altogether.  
“Come on,” Dean said softly, pulling Cas back. They exited the chapel without another word. 

The sound of the double doors closing echoed around the hall. Zak saw Dean visibly shiver before jerking his hand away from the doorknob like it was hot. They stood in silence a moment, each caught up in their own minds. Crackling from the walkie-talkie nearly caused Dean and Zak to jump out of their skin.  
“…ak….come…n….Z..k…” Zak fumbled for a moment with the device at his hip, before finally unclipping it.  
“This is Zak,” he spoke more confidently than he felt. There was more static on the line, no words coming through for several seconds.  
“……his body….not….. …..must be…. omewhere in…. ouse…”  
“You’re not coming through very clear,” Zak muttered into the walkie that he held only centimeters from his face, eyes darting around as if Velazquez might appear at any moment. The voice from the walkie stopped, leaving only static for a long moment before cutting off. Zak cursed.  
“I believe they were trying to tell us that they did not find his body in the crypt,” Cas said carefully. Dean exhaled sharply.  
“Somewhere in the house. That’s what that last part said,” he agreed. Zak nodded and the three of them began to walk back down the hall towards the main staircase.  
“I think we should regroup at home base. Come up with a more solid plan,” Zak suggested.  
“And how do you suggest we do that without the bastard hearing every single thing we say? He can already get into our minds so how could we…”  
“What makes you say that?” Zak asked a bit too quickly, whirling to look at Dean. The man looked abashed, face flushing.  
“Nothing in particular. All I’m saying is that I think he knows what scares us, what gets under our skin.” They had reached the top of the stairs. “He knows our weaknesses.” 

Without warning, Castiel was lifted off the ground and slammed against the wall behind them, slowly sliding upwards into the center of the large pastoral painting that hung there.  
“CAS!” Dean roared, lunging towards the angel who dangled just out of his reach. Zak stood frozen in terror as an agonized scream ripped itself from Cas’s throat. Blood began to pool in his palms and across his hairline, dripping down his face. Dean was spewing threats at Velazquez, wildly brandishing his iron rod in every direction. Cas’s eyes were squeezed shut, teeth bared in pain, every muscle tensed and completely unable to move. A young girl’s laughing face was smeared with blood beneath his left arm as another couple embraced mid dance to his right. The villagers’ joy was now sinister, mocking. All of their eyes seemed to look towards Cas. It was only then that Zak realized that he was pinned to the painting in the same way that Christ was to the cross.  
“Father!” Castiel gasped, eyes snapping open to look heavenward. There was a disembodied growl directly behind Zak that made the back of his neck prickle and his blood run cold. Cas dropped like a stone, hitting the floor with a hard thud. 

Dean dropped his iron bar in his haste as he scrambled to Cas’s side.  
“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” he chanted in a whisper, and for the first time that night Zak saw true fear in Dean’s eyes. He placed a shaking hand on Cas's chest, the other checking his pulse.  
“We have to get him downstairs, to home base,” Zak said as calmly as he could manage. Dean unsuccessfully tried to wipe some of the blood from Castiel’s face. The angel appeared to be unconscious.  
“This shouldn’t have happened to him. Velazquez can't... He shouldn’t be hurt. His Grace…” Dean rambled, voice cracking as eyes traveling down to look at the angel's lacerated palms. Carefully, he pulled back the coat at his chest to reveal a slowly growing splotch of blood over the right side of his ribcage. “He fucking crucified him,” Dean nearly whimpered. “Velazquez, you SICK BASTARD!” Out of nowhere, something appeared to hit Dean across the face, nearly knocking him over. Dean practically snarled in response.  
“Hit me again, you piece of shit, I DARE YOU!” Dean roared, springing up to his knees. Velazquez did, indeed, hit him again, this time sending him reeling, blood spraying from his mouth.  
“Enough!” Zak yelled, picking up Dean’s iron pipe. Without really knowing what he was doing, he swung in a seemingly random direction. To his shock, the swing was met with a surprised yelp that seemed to come from the walls of the house itself. The air was sucked out of the room with a pop, leaving Zak’s ears ringing in the strange, non-threatening silence that followed. Dean looked up at him from where he lay after the last hit, eyes wide. His lip was split and a small gash had appeared above his right eye.  
“How’d you… How’d… You couldn’t even see him,” Dean babbled.  
“Beginner’s luck,” Zak shrugged with a wary smile. “Come on, let’s get Cas downstairs before he comes back.” 

 

\- - - - -

 

September 23  
10:57 PM  
Velasquez’s Crypt

 

“I don’t know Sam,” Nick said slowly, beginning to back towards Aaron who still stood at the door. “It just doesn’t feel right.” He knew the hunter was experienced, but every single one of his hairs was standing on end. It was the tell-tale sign that they needed to get the fuck out of there. Sam was busy shuffling around the perimeter of the tomb, looking for false walls, hidden latches. Nick pulled out his walkie-talkie.  
“Zak, come in Zak.” He paused, waiting for a reply. Static, followed by a slight crackling.  
“Listen, his body is not in the crypt. It’s gotta be somewhere in the house. Do you copy?”  
More static.  
“Fuck, I hope they’re okay,” Nick cursed, dejectedly clipping the device back onto his belt. Sam gave him a sympathetic look.  
“There’s no way to know right now, but we have to focus. We’re on to something here, I can feel it,” Sam assured, kicking a few dead leaves out of a corner. “Velasquez may not be here, but I think he created a diversion to a diversion. His crypt doesn’t contain his body, so why should anyone care?”  
Aaron and Nick exchanged glances before Aaron shrugged.  
“Exactly. Nobody should care. Smells like a Red Herring to me. And as they say, follow your nose,” Sam monologued, beginning to walk in circles around the center sarcophagus.  
“Look,” he said, bending down to point at something on the floor. “Scuffmarks. Deep ones. I think…” he trailed off, standing to look thoughtfully at the marble coffin for a moment before throwing his entire weight against it.  
“Dude…” was all Aaron could manage.  
“Don’t just stand there, help me!” Sam squeezed out, face turning red. Nick jumped into action first, throwing himself against the unmoving stone at Sam’s side. They two men heaved for a moment before both turning to look at Aaron expectantly.  
“Oh fuck you guys,” he protested, before wordlessly moving to join them. “This is my workout for the month,” he huffed. 

With all their remaining strength, the three men were rewarded with a small amount of give. Then, a lot of give. Aaron let out a yelp of surprise and Nick scrambled to maintain his footing. After the initial push, the empty marble coffin practically slid across the floor on its own, revealing a thin, stone staircase leading down into pitch-blackness. The smell of decay and rot increased ten-fold, causing all three men to double back, coughing and hacking. They all ended up outside the crypt, desperately panting and heaving in the moist night air.  
“Well, that answers that,” Sam said with a surprised, breathless laugh, earning a slightly hysterical giggle from Aaron, and a small chuckle from Nick in turn. The three men laughed together, out of disbelief and the sheer absurdity of their situation.  
“But in all seriousness,” Aaron interjected, expression turning stoic. “There is no fucking way in hell I’m going down there.”


	5. Running with the Devil

September 24  
11:16 PM  
Home Base, Parlor 

 

Castiel lay motionless on the coffee table that sat in the center of their ring of salt. Zak and Dean had done their best to cushion him with various pillows and blankets from around the room. His breath rose steadily up and down, albeit shakily. The two had spent almost half an hour cleaning and dressing his wounds with nothing more than a bottle of water, a ripped-off strip of Dean’s flannel over shirt, and an under-stocked med kit from Zak’s gear. Zak had watched, throat tight with words he didn’t dare speak, as Dean gently dabbed the blood from Cas’s face from where it had dripped from the dozens of small cuts at his hairline. Thorns, Zak thought grimly. They had taken off his shoes to find large puncture wounds through his feet as well, swollen and oozing. 

Currently, the two men sat side-by-side on the Queen Anne sofa that sat parallel to the table, neither speaking nor looking at the other. They simply watched Cas, both at a loss for what to do next. Zak's mind began wandering into dark places. What if they didn't make it out of here tonight? What if they became trapped in this hell manor, doomed to play cat and mouse with Velazquez for eternity? The room itself seemed to be growing darker by the moment, triggered by his thoughts. The shadows in the corners pooled outwards, closing in on them, reaching out to him with long, black fingers. He took a deep breath, closing his eyes, trying to bring himself back to reality. When he opened them again, the shadows had receded.  
“Fuck,” Dean said finally, grinding the palms of his hands against his forehead. “I’ve been so stupid,” he sighed heavily, and Zak found himself wanting to agree with him, but remained silent.  
“I was so sure that this would be just like all the other times, and why shouldn't it be?” he muttered, sniffing loudly. “It looks like Cas's mojo is all but gone, so he can't freaking heal himself. I have no idea what's going to happen to him if we don't gank that bitch soon... I just don't know how. I wish Sam were here, he'd know. He's the brains, I'm the..." He stopped short, a whole new wave of panic washing over him. "Christ, Sammy’s still out there on the grounds, in god knows what condition…”  
“Hey,” Zak finally spoke, as gently as he could. “Sam seems like a strong, level-headed guy. You said it yourself, you guys have done this hundreds of times. Plus he’s huge. I’m more worried about Nick and Aaron… This is way over any of our heads.”  
“He’s my little brother, and he's my responsibility,” Dean all but whispered, and Zak had an overwhelming urge to protect Dean, who suddenly looked much smaller where he sat slumped on the couch. The feeling was fleeting, however, and he got to his feet in an attempt to move away from any overly-emotional thoughts that might rear their soft, squishy heads. 

“Well if we want to make sure they’re safe, the sure fire way to do that is to find Velazquez’s body and fucking burn it. Burn the hell out of it.” Dean looked up at him with tired eyes. The cut above his right eye had seeped into his eyebrow before drying into a dark brown crust. Zak sighed distractedly.  
“Here,” he said, grabbing a spare gauze pad. Dampening it with the tiny amount of water left in the bottle, he knelt in front of Dean and began to lightly dab at the gash. Dean looked surprised, and slightly startled, but didn’t pull away as Zak hovered barely a foot away from his face, cleaning the wound with a startling amount of gentleness.  
“Thanks, mom,” Dean mumbled after Zak finished.  
“I just hate to see my little boy get hurt,” Zak fired back with mock concern, earning a quiet chortle from Dean. Then there was a silent moment where Dean simply stared at him, looking like he wanted to say something before thinking better of it. Zak cleared his throat, moving to sit at the opposite end of the sofa, putting some safe, manly distance between them.  
“So, what’s the deal with you and Cas?” he asked with a thumb jab in the angel’s direction. Dean’s face screwed up for a moment, as though Zak was suggesting something crude, but then evened out.  
“Oh, like, why does he hang around me and Sammy?” Dean let out a long breath of air. “Man, that’s a hell of a long story.”  
“Well, at the moment, I think we both need a good distraction. So try me.” Zak folded his arms and waited. Dean ran a hand through his hair nervously, eyes darting over to look at the supine angel on the coffee table.  
“Might be a distraction for you," he laughed darkly, "but for me... " he trailed off, remaining silent for a long moment, as if to gather his words.

"I was in a bad place,” Dean breathed out in a whoosh. “I really bad place. Sam and I …. We have a tendency to rush into things without… really making sure it’s the proper… uh…” Zak saw him flounder for words.  
“I get it, you guys are the shoot first, ask questions later kind of guys. I kind of got that from the moment we met.”  
“Yeah, well…” Dean chuckled in self-deprecation, “It gets us into trouble a lot.”  
“I can’t imagine why.”  
“Shut up, I’m telling a story.” Zak made a gesture for him to continue. Dean looked over at Cas again.  
“I was in Hell,” he said, pausing dramatically. Zak quirked an eyebrow.  
"Hell."  
"Burning lake, pit of fire, the whole nine yards."  
“Wait, you're telling me you were _literally_ in Hell. As in h-e-double-hockey-sticks Hell.”  
“The one and only,” Dean grimaced.  
“But… why?” Zak gaped, having trouble imagining Dean doing anything horrible enough to warrant going to Hell.  
“Sold my soul. To save Sam. When my time was up, they came and got me, killed me, and dragged my ass, or at least my soul's ass, into Hell.”

They sat in silence for a moment as Zak’s mind wildly processed all the information he was just given. One, that Hell actually existed; two, that it was possible to sell one's soul; and three, that Dean died and was now no longer dead. His head was buzzing with so many questions that he barely noticed when Dean stared talking again.  
“Cas pulled me out,” Dean whispered. “He said he had orders, but sometimes…” He faded off, looking thoughtful.  
“I owe him my life. I owe him mine and Sammy’s lives a thousand times over, and damn it, it's true, I don’t treat him with the respect he deserves.” Dean ran his hands over his eyes. “I have no idea why.”

They descended into silence again. Zak shifted uncomfortably, feeling as though he shouldn’t be hearing these things. He cleared his throat, just to fill the silence. Dean was resting his head in his hands and Zak felt like he should say something. Comfort him? It seemed stupid to offer comfort to someone who's been to Hell. He blew out a puff of air, scratching the back of his neck roughly before letting his hand slide down the back and to the side.  
"Thanks," he said with some hesitation. Dean looked over at him.  
"For what?"  
"For..." Zak made a vague gesture with his hand. "Showing me you're not just an asshole with a bad power-trip, I guess. I mean, it's pretty damn clear you guys have been through some shit..." _To fucking Hell and back,_ Zak thought, but didn't dare say. Dean gave him a half-smile.  
"Yeah, uh, you're welcome, I guess. I still think you're an asshole, but most of my friends are assholes anyways," Dean said with a low chuckle, slapping Zak on the shoulder before turning to look back at Cas. Zak felt his chest swell with pride out of some strange sort of victory. _Friends._ He watched as Dean's mind became foggy again, eyes clouding with worry.  
“Listen, we need to start thinking clearly. Get our heads straight. He’s trying to bring us down. Trying to distract us.”  
“Yeah, he’s doing a damn good job,” Dean mumbled, sighing loudly.  
“Nope, fuck that,” Zak spat, rising off the couch. “He’s been diverting us. Trying to lead us away from where his body is, I know it. Now let’s think critically for a moment without straining anything. He first tried to separate us when we were up on the third floor, so it’s not a half bad guess that his body is up there.”  
“But he could also have just been messing with us. That seemed like more of a way to weaken us than to divert us,” Dean offered. "I know diversion well."  
“True,” Zak nodded, beginning to slowly pace back and forth between Dean, who was still sitting on the sofa, and the unconscious Castiel.  
“Then there was the bedroom, where I had…” he looked at Dean, feeling an uncomfortable pull in his stomach. “Where I had a nasty encounter with the ghost of Eleanor, or Velazquez using her image.” Dean nodded encouragingly.  
“I think it was kind of his way of puffing up his chest, showing me who was boss.”  
“You sure you’re just not projecting?” Dean asked, smirking, albeit tiredly. Zak still flipped him the bird. 

“Then…” his eyes trailed over to Cas, voice softening. “Then he attacked Cas, seemingly out of nowhere. So why? He's an angel, sure, but he was as helpless as us. Zero powers and all. And if his plan was to take us all out like that, he would have done it sooner. But I can tell, he's a sick fuck and likes to play with his victims before he kills them, bat them around a bit, get them nice and scared. That's what he did with me. But he stepped outside of the pattern with Cas... So I’d say him attacking Cas is our biggest lead.”  
“Unless he was just trying to get to me,” Dean offered, spitting out the words bitterly. Zak paused, looking between Dean and the angel and feeling like he was still missing something big.  
“It’s possible,” Zak said softly with a shrug. “But think of it this way, maybe the bastard needed to both distract us and take Cas out of the picture. Maybe Cas was on to something that we didn’t know about.”  
“Like what? He’d barely said two words since we’d left that sick excuse for a…”

Realization dawned on them like a flood of ice-cold water.  
“The chapel.”  
“Fuck,” Zak cursed under his breath.  
“Cas was talking about something behind the walls… I thought he was being all cryptic and shit. He does that sometimes…” Dean ranted, immediately getting to his feet.  
“Why the fuck does it have to be the chapel?” Zak groaned.  
“But I think he actually meant there was something _in_ the walls.”  
“Literally anywhere else in this house would be better… But fuck it, we have to go in there. Look for false walls, trap doors, anything…”  
Dean said nothing in response. 

“Fuck!” Zak shouted sharply, his voice echoing off the coffered ceiling. They both stood in silence for a minute. The house stood with them, waiting.  
“But the thing is... anything we try to do, anything at all, Velazquez is going to kick our asses,” Dean huffed in frustration. “He’s powerful. I don't know how he's this _fucking_ powerful, but he is. And I'm telling you, man, I haven't come up against a ghost like this before. I'm out of ideas.”  
“We have to fucking try,” Zak pressed, stifling the new fear that arose with Dean's warning. “We take salt, iron, anything that can fuck his shit up. We defend ourselves as best we can. It’s all we can do… But we have to do something. We can't sit here any longer!”

Dean remained silent for a minute, staring pensively out into the hallway.  
“Do it for Sam,” Zak added. “For Cas. For… for me, and my crew. Please.”  
“You do realize that what you’re suggesting is practically a suicide mission, right?” Dean interjected stepping up to him, seeming to suddenly regain his former bad-ass routine. “There’s a slim change of us coming out of this alive. Are you prepared for that?" He looked Zak directly in the eyes, imploring. "I've died before, several times, actually, and let me be the first to tell you that it isn't a pleasant experience. Are you sure you want to do this?”  
“Either way, we’re dead in the water,” Zak shrugged. “If I’m gonna die, I’m gonna drag that sick bastard to hell with me.” 

 

\------

 

September 23  
11:05 PM  
Velazquez’s Crypt

 

Sam shone his flashlight down into the dark passageway. It appeared to go down at least twenty feet, judging by how the beam of light dissipated before it could reach the bottom floor.  
“Alright,” Sam nodded, definitively.  
“Alright?” Aaron mimicked, letting out a hysterical chuckle. “Alright!? What the fuck do you mean ‘alright’? I thought this was… I thought… You’re not actually planning on going down there are you?” Sam just stared at him blankly.  
“I have to.”  
“No, you don’t have to do dick shit, man! Listen to yourself!”  
“Aaron,” Nick interjected.  
“No, fuck this, I want off this ride. I mean, what has this guy done so far, huh? Some disembodied footsteps? General creepiness? But this…!” he gestured vaguely at Sam and the passageway, “This is fucking insane!”  
“Aaron!” Nick hissed.  
“Shut the fuck up. I’m out of here,” Aaron waved away Nick’s approach, turning on his heel. “If you need me, I’ll be in the car.” And with that, he left the crypt.  
“Fucking hell,” Nick groaned, following him. 

Sam sighed heavily, stepping over to his rucksack to pull out salt and lighter fluid.  
“SAM!” Nick called from outside the crypt, startling him into nearly spilling the salt. He leapt to his feet and was out the door in two steps. Nick was frantically jogging back and forth in the small plot.  
“He’s gone!” He yelled hoarsely, eyes wide with fear. “AARON!”  
“Damn it…” Sam cursed under his breath, but didn’t move from the front of the crypt. Nick continued to scream for his friend, but no reply came, just a jeering echo bouncing off of the gravestones that lay scattered across the vast emptiness of the misty lawn. 

 

\---

 

The moment Aaron stepped outside of the crypt, he immediately knew he had made a terrible mistake. 

He stood frozen to the spot as he blinked dumbly into the sunlight of a bright, summer afternoon. A soft wind rustled his clothes and stirred the grass around him into a gentle dance. In the distance, the house still loomed. It was pristine; expertly manicured. The hedges were shaped into elaborate figures and the ponds flanking the main entrance glistened in the sun. In the distance, he heard the tinkling sound of laughter and gentle conversation.  
“What in the ever living fuck…” he breathed, taking several steps backwards. Instead of his back hitting the crypt, he nearly fell on his ass. 

The crypt was gone. 

Aaron let out a full on panicked yelp and bolted for the house. His belt, laden with equipment, swung clumsily around his hips, causing him to trip. He stumbled and fell, his rucksack spilling most of his contents, including his camera. In a daze, he hurriedly began scooping up all of the gear, pausing over top the camera. Curiously, he picked it up, fitting it against his palm like shaking hands with an old friend. Half expecting it not to turn on, he was surprised to see the small LED screen flicker to life. He let out the breath he didn’t realize his was holding in one, large whoosh.  
“Okay, so,” he began, shakily, turning the camera around to face him. “I have no idea what fucking happened, but Nick and Sam are nowhere to be found. The crypt is fucking gone,” he turned the camera around to the small plot behind him where only a small smattering of graves currently stood. “I’m pretty sure I’ve been… like… transported back in time or something, cause look at the fucking house!” 

He whirled back around, capturing the house in its entirety, zooming in slightly on the beautiful front yard and elaborate topiaries.  
“So I hear like this… talking in the distance. I’m gonna go over and see what that’s about.” He whirled the camera back on himself. “If I don’t make it out of this alive, whoever finds this tape, tell my family I love them, and that I’m sorry. And tell Zak he’s an asshole for getting us into this. And fuck Sam and Dean. Nothing personal guys, just, fuck you.”

With that, he set off towards the house, camera still rolling by his side.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another installment! I don't know who's reading this, but my hits keep going up. So thanks, guys! I know this is pretty crack-tastic. And it only gets more so as we go on. Still in the process of tacking on a bit more to the ending, but updates are going to be pretty regular from here on out.
> 
> Also, I don't know if it matters to anyone, but in my mind the GAC are kind of aged in and around Season 3 or 4 of the show. I think that's when they were their most genuine (and precious). So if that helps anybody's mental image. And our SPN boys are kind of eeehhh..... I have a hard time keeping up with that damn timeline, so I'm gonna say it's somewhere after Season 5, but I really don't care about continuity. It all became so complicated and annoying that I started reading fanfiction more than actually watching the damn show around the middle of Season 6. So we'll just say alternate universe-canon divergence for this story. 
> 
> That's all! 
> 
> Peace out cub scouts.


	6. Bad Moon Rising

September 24  
11:41 PM  
Home Base, Parlor

 

Zak felt inappropriately giddy when Dean handed him a rather large gun.   
“So we’re going to shoot the ghosts?” he asked with a sideways smile. Dean was currently loading his own.  
“The rounds are filled with salt. Does the same thing iron does,” he assured, pumping the fore-end once to slide the rounds into place. “You know how to use one?”   
“Give me some more credit than that, Dean,” Zak scoffed.   
“Well, I don’t know how trigger happy you paranormal investigators are these days, so forgive me for askin,” Dean taunted, shoving several more backup rounds into the leather pouch that hung from his belt.  
“Right,” Zak laughed, opening his gun to inspect the rounds. “So, what’s the plan? Do we try and contact Nick, Aaron, and Sam?”   
“Nope,” Dean shook his head gravely. “The sooner we burn this bitch, the better. You said it yourself, Sam can take care of himself and your crew.” Something in Dean’s voice told Zak that he didn’t really believe that, but he ignored it to the best of his ability. Dean was afraid, and that absolutely terrified Zak to no end, but he was more than determined to go down swinging. 

“Here’s what we do,” Dean said, confidence returning to his voice. “We cover each others asses as we head for the chapel. Velazquez is probably gonna bring out the big guns for this one, so stay on alert at all times. No distractions. He already pulled some serious psychological shit on you, so don’t let him do it again. Same goes for me, if you see me falling into a trap, you gotta pull me out.”  
“Okay,” Zak confirmed with a nod, feeling a small line of sweat began to form at his temple.  
“I’ll bring up the rear first, you lead the way. I think you know the layout of this place better than me, anyways.”  
“Right.”   
“Okay. Go team break.”  
“Dean?”

Dean paused mid turn to look at Zak curiously.   
“What’s up?”   
“I’m just… Even if you’re an ass hole, I’m glad we met,” Zak squeezed out, feeling incredibly sheepish.  
“Hey, none of that ‘if we don’t make it out alive’ bullshit, okay? We’re getting through this. All of us.”  
“I know, but just in case, I…”  
“Uhp uhp uhp… shove it. You’ll be fine,” Dean assured, effectively ending the conversation. Zak rolled his eyes, but stepped into place.   
“Let’s go.” 

Slowly, the two stepped out of the circle of salt and began to make their way across the cavernous entrance hall. The house sat, quiet and still, almost mockingly so.   
“We’ll need to go past the stairs and down the western hall,” Zak half-whispered over his shoulder. Dean was, for the most part, walking backwards, shoulders bumping into Zak’s periodically.   
“Got it. Everything clear so far?”  
“Not a peep.”  
“I don’t like it.”  
“Yeah, me neither.” 

They continued on in silence, stepping softly and carefully. The air seemed to bend and sway around them, as if they were carving a path through a thicket. Muffled sounds of footsteps from above them startled Zak, and he stopped suddenly. The warm palm of Dean’s hand pressed against his low back, urging him forward.  
“Keep on truckin’, soldier,” he muttered. The footsteps multiplied as they began to make their way down the long hallway that lead to the chapel. It sounded as if hundreds of people were making their way down the hall just above them. 

Zak’s breath was coming in labored puffs through his nose as his eyes darted back and forth between the darkened doorways of the hall. The flashlight taped to the barrel of his gun flickered ominously.   
“Dean?” Zak called out, despite feeling the heat of the man’s back just behind his own.   
“You got this, we’re almost there. Just keep looking straight ahead. And shoot anything that jumps into your line of sight.”  
“That’s not the best policy,” Zak laughed nervously, his voice echoing off the marble floor.   
“It is tonight,” Dean countered. 

The chapel doors loomed in front of them. The very air seemed to thicken as Zak reached a hand out to turn the knob. The footsteps had stopped completely as his hand made contact, plunging both of them into a deafening silence. He pressed into the room, feeling Dean bump into him once more. They shuffled slowly into the center isle, flashlights and guns whirling wildly around the large space.   
“Well,” Dean huffed. “I have to say, I expected that to be harder.” 

With a deafening bang, the whole room exploded into a cacophony of light and sound. Dean instinctively pushed Zak to the floor, half landing on top of him. Nearly face-planting into the rough carpet, Zak sputtered and turned on his side, eyes widening at what he saw. A gnarled and gangly figure was crawling towards him at an alarming rate from beneath the pew closest to them, skin loose around its elbows and neck, bones seeming to snap in and out of place as it shuffled, crab-like in his direction. It let out a shriek, mouth and eyes both black, gaping holes. Zak felt paralyzed, useless. The creature’s shriek was lost in the whirlwind of noise that rose up all around him. Figures with lolling tongues, wide, toothy smiles, bulging eyes, or empty sockets, both humanoid and completely alien, all crawled rapidly towards the two men, shrieking and moaning. Some were laughing. 

Finally, Zak came back to himself as Dean shot the thing that had been crawling towards him in the head.   
“SALT!” he yelled over the bedlam, shoving a container against Zak’s chest. As if by instinct, Zak twisted to his knees and began to pour a shaky circle around the two of them as Dean fired off shot after shot into the oncoming assault of creatures. Zak closed the circle and fell against the back of Dean’s legs, shaking. The circle was too small, but otherwise it would hold.   
“Start shooting!’ Dean ordered, cocking his gun to take aim again. Zak numbly fumbled with his gun before quickly getting to his feet. He pressed fully against Dean and felt the other man lean into him as well. Zak took a deep breath, the fear in his body turning into adrenaline and a pure, primal desire to stay alive.   
“GO TO HELL!” Zak yelled, firing off three rounds into the oncoming mass. Three apparitions shrieked and dissipated in a violent whirlwind of smoke and dust. He fired off several more before having to reload.   
“There are too many of them!” he yelled and felt the recoil of Dean’s gun against his own back. The other man didn’t answer, just let out a startled yell. Zak turned to look over his shoulder and nearly had to do a double take. Not four feet from Dean stood Sam, in the midst of the creatures, just standing there, completely placid.   
Hello Dean, he mouthed, voice lost over the noise. With a blink, his eyes turned jet black as an insidious smile crept across his normally friendly face. 

With an angry cry, Dean took aim and fired, turning the apparition into a cloud of smoke. Zak turned back around, only to be faced with the naked, wet figure of Eleanor. Her wounds oozed dark, thick blood, running down her chest and legs. She smiled sweetly at Zak, holding out her hand.   
“Come,” she said, and Zak heard the voice echo in his head. “You must be cleaned.” He took aim and shot, sending her into oblivion.   
“Dean!” he called. “There are just too many!” he repeated. “What do we do?” 

Silence from the man behind him. 

“Dean!”  
“I don’t know!” he yelled back, followed by another shot. Zak felt the bottom drop out of his stomach.   
“I’m sorry, Zak,” he called, voice breaking. "But just keep shooting!"

 

\- - - - -

 

???  
Aaron’s Cam 

 

The talking had grown more distinct, and eventually lead Aaron to what looked like a garden party. Men in trim pants and sport jackets lounged lazily on wicker chairs beneath the veranda, as several women in small hats and long, white dressed that buttoned all the way up to their necks played croquet on the lawn. One looked up and waved to him, which made him stop dead in his tracks. She spoke softly to one of the women near her before handing her the croquet mallet she was using and walking towards Aaron.   
“So glad you could make it, my dearest. How have you been?” she called, stepping right up as if to him to give him a peck on the cheek. Aaron all but jumped away from her. She giggled like it was a game.  
“I…uh… um…”  
“Articulate as ever I see.” Her laugh tinkled like a small bell. “Well come on, then. We've all already had lunch, and Meredith is upstairs resting before tonight's festivities. But, in the mean time, I have something to show you.” She turned, motioning for him to follow. For some reason, and Aaron had no idea why, his feet began to move him across the grass in her wake. The men beneath the veranda nodded at him in formal acknowledgement, sipping lazily at their glasses of brandy. 

It all felt like a dream. It had to be a dream. Aaron pinched his arm, wincing at the pain. The woman in front of him led him into the house, through the back room, which was lively with pool playing and smelled heavily of cigar smoke. She politely greeted several of the men inside and kissed the cheek of one of the women near the door. One man wearing suspenders, twirled the pool stick in his hand before expertly knocking two of the colorful balls into the netted pockets.  
“Come along!” the woman called to Aaron over her shoulder. The other girl at the door giggled and glided away as he passed her. 

As if being pulled along by a string, Aaron trailed after the woman as she led him through the back rooms of the house, down a set of stairs and through a long, narrow hallway.  
“Where are we going?” he finally managed to ask, but his own voice sounded distant, almost muffled, like he was hearing it through water.   
“It’s a surprise,” the woman responded, sending him a coy look over her shoulder. A small, thin door stood at the end of the hall. As they drew closer, a familiar smell wafted towards Aaron. Chemicals. Chlorine. The woman pushed the door open with a smile and Aaron was immediately hit with warm, moist air. 

It was the swimming pool. 

“Come on, we don’t have much time! Nobody’s down here yet,” she called with a laugh, tossing her sun hat to the side and beginning to unbutton her dress. Aaron stood frozen in the doorway. He was having a hard time remembering how he’d gotten here, or even what his own name was. The woman had let her dress slide down to her ankles and was in the process of removing her white, knee-length bloomers, revealing a perfect heart-shaped ass.   
“Dear Lord, give me strength,” Aaron mumbled, stepping into the hot, humid room. The door clicked shut. He lumbered like a man under a spell towards the strange, beautiful woman, who was currently loosening her corset.  
“Do you need help?” Aaron asked, mouth dry. She looked at him over her shoulder, hair falling in soft ringlets across her bare shoulders.   
“Where oh where, my dearest one, is the fun in that?” she asked, and Aaron heard the popping of her corset’s brackets. She still stood away from him, but opened her corset wide, letting it fall to the floor with the rest of her garments. 

Aaron swallowed, hard. The woman slowly spun, revealing her full body to him, naked and glorious. She jerked her head towards the pool.   
“Care for a quick dip?” she asked, biting her bottom lip with a smile. Before Aaron could respond, she sprinted, lighter than air, to the side of the pool and dove in. Aaron hurriedly shouldered off his knapsack and dumped his camera on top of it. He clumsily rid himself of his pants, and ripped his shirt off of his head. He elected to leave his boxers on, out of respect for the lady. 

Slowly he made his way to the edge of the pool and tentatively dipped a toe into the rippling green water. It was the perfect temperature, not too cool, but not too warm. The woman had surfaced from her dive and waded half way out, grinning at him. Aaron steeled himself, taking a few steps back, then ran forward and jumped. 

 

\- - - - -

 

September 24  
11:45 PM  
Velazquez’s Crypt

 

“Nick!” Sam called as the man, after nearly twenty minutes of searching, still ran wildly across the grounds. “We have to finish the job. We have to go down there.” Nick skidded to a halt, turning to look at Sam with fury in his eyes.   
“This is all your fault!” he yelled, stomping towards Sam where he still stood at the entrance of the crypt.   
“No, it’s not,” Sam said calmly, even as Nick invaded his personal space. The man stewed, mere inches from his face, in some sort of primitive display of dominance. Sam didn’t flinch or back down, and eventually Nick lost his fight, stepping back with a frustrated huff.   
“Okay. Now I need you to suck it up and do this for Aaron. And Zak. There’s something down there and we need to take care of it. Are you going to make yourself useful or not?” Sam asked, words bitter as he stared down at Nick. The man grumbled his acquiescence.   
“Good, now let’s get this over with.”

The two walked silently back to the crypt. Once inside, Sam handed Nick a small, revolver handgun with a polished wooden handle.   
“It’s filled with salt rounds,” Sam explained as Nick flipped open the cylinder to inspect the bullets. “We’re probably dealing with ghosts, but that will still take down most things that go bump in the night. So aim well, and shoot fast. Here’s a pack of extra rounds.” He tossed Nick a small pack of bullets.   
“Where the hell do you guys get this shit?”  
“Private suppliers.”

Sam cocked his own gun, tucking a container of lighter fluid into his back pocket. He handed Nick a second container of salt and a box of matches.   
“Down we go,” he said with a tight-lipped smile. Nick watched as Sam barely fit into the passage, having to duck and shuffle down slightly sideways. With a deep sigh of bone-weary defeat, Nick followed him, flashlight in one hand, gun in the other, and a box of salt in his pocket. 

The smell had both of them wanting to gag. Nick covered his nose with this sleeve, eyes watering at the overwhelming putridity as they descended further into the darkness. In front of him, Nick heard Sam let out a hacking cough, then a muffled curse.   
“I see the floor,” he called out, and Nick sent out a silent prayer of thanks to whatever might be listening.   
“Holy… Nick, you’re not going to believe this.”

As his foot finally his the ground floor, Nick allowed his flashlight to sweep around the dark expanse of the underground chamber. He immediately slammed himself against the stairwell wall, closing his eyes as he attempted to stifled the scream that rose to his throat. 

Bodies. Hundreds of bodies, stacked in piles almost twenty feet back into the chamber. They were all in various stages of decay and rot.   
“This…” Sam was running his hands through his hair. “These must be his victims. He kept their bodies?” he seemed to asked nobody in particular.   
“This is incredibly fucked,” Nick added for validation, still recovering from the initial shock of it.   
“This must be why the house is so powerful,” Sam began rambling to himself. “This would explain how Velazquez could draw so much energy into… Oh my god, it all makes since.” Same was reaching for the salt and lighter fluid.   
“Nick, you start on that corner. Start throwing salt across the bodies without wasting much. We want them covered, but we may not have enough to cover the entire room if we get too generous,” Sam explained, already beginning to throw handfuls of salt across the stacks of corpses on the wall opposite.   
“If need be, there may be more salt in the house, but I don’t think we have that kind of time.”

Systematically, the two began to tedious process of salting the bodies. Nick held his nose with one hand as he sent sprays of salt off in every direction. He paused momentarily over one body that lay atop a stack, curiously noting that the clothing it wore seemed oddly modern, and its appeared to be less decayed than those around it. He decided not to dwell on it for the sake of his own sanity. Sam soon began to trail behind Nick, dousing them with lighter fluid.   
“Get by the entrance, start up the stairs once I light the match. This could be dangerous,” Sam ordered.  
“You don’t say…” Nick scoffed, but obeyed none-the-less. He watched Sam continue to throw thin streams of gasoline across the carcasses before heading back over to where Nick stood.  
“Alright, here comes the fun part.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fuck cliff-hangers, amirite?


	7. The Mercy Seat

Zak was almost out of bullets. He had begun to sink down to the ground, Dean following his lead. The two ended up sitting back-to-back, defeated amongst the raging howl and fury of the apparitions that spun wildly around the room. Zak closed his eyes, leaning his head back to rest against Dean’s shoulder.   
“We tried,” he said, just loud enough for Dean to hear. He hear the man behind him curse loudly.   
“It’s not over till the fat lady sings, Zak!” he shouted, firing off another round into the seemingly endless mass of writhing creatures.   
“It think she’s singing right now, dude. We just can’t hear her.”  
“I’m gonna need you to shut up.” 

 

\- - - - -

 

The water that hit Aaron’s half naked body was not the warm, perfect water that he had felt with his toes. It was ice-cold, swallowing his entire body and making his limbs go rigid. He surfaced with a strangled gasp, floundering in the middle of a deep, dark pool. His flashlight was the only remaining light source, casting a thin beam of light across the room. Aaron spun wildly in the water, looking for the apparition of the woman who had led him there. His heart pounded in his ears, his whole body beginning to shake from cold and terror. One final spin brought him face-to-face with one of the most terrifying, hideous creatures he had ever seen. Its body was a floating mass of sinew and water-rotted skin, its face no longer held any trace of humanity. Aaron let out a scream. It shrieked in his face in return, breath smelling of carrion.

With a fury he didn't believe he was capable of, Aaron began to swim furiously away from the creature, but its movement were inhumanly fast. Before he knew what was happening, it pulled him beneath the surface of the water. He thrashed violently, opening his eyes despite the sting of chlorine. 

The creature was not alone. Dozens of others like it stared back at him from beneath the icy water, all bloated and deformed. Their wrinkled, pallid hands reached towards him, beckoning him into the abyss. With one final burst of energy before he ran out of oxygen, Aaron kicked out against the creature who held his leg with all his might. It relinquished its grasp. 

With a mighty heave, Aaron surface once more, sucking oxygen into his lungs for only a moment before swimming with all his might towards the wall of the pool. He could feel the creatures, perhaps they were humans once, cutting through the water behind him, hands outstretched. His scream was lost in the frantic splashing of the water, nothing more than a gurgle. 

His hand made contact with the concrete wall just as a hand closed around his ankle.   
“FUCK OFF!” he shrieked, kicking violently, gripping the wall with both hands.  
“GO TO HELL!”

 

\- - - - -

 

Sam lit the match, holding it pensively to look around the room. He paused, squinting to see a disturbance at the other end of the crypt. A figure had emerged out of the pile, followed by another, and another, and they were walking, no, sprinting towards them. 

“Run!” Sam yelled to Nick, throwing the match onto the pile to his left. The blaze caught immediately, illuminating the enraged, decaying face of those who had died at the hands of Velazquez, willingly or otherwise. The fire ripped across the room, consuming everything. It nipped at the heels of Sam as he tumbled after Nick into the cool, damp tomb above the ground. 

 

\- - - - -

 

All at once, Aaron was able to heave himself up onto dry land, scooting desperately away from the water’s edge. 

He sat, facing the large expanse of the pool, soaking wet and heaving to the point of pain to try and catch his breath. He felt a sob rise in his chest as he looked across the room. 

The pool was empty. There was no water. No bodies. 

It was just him. Alone. 

 

\- - - - -

 

The shrieks and howls of the spirits zooming around Zak and Dean reached an incredible crescendo as almost every single apparition disappeared in a fury of flame, seeming to suck the air right out of the room. 

The two men sat stunned, still pressed against the other in the small ring of salt. Zak’s breathing was coming out in labored wheezes. To his surprise, Dean let out a whoop of victory behind him.   
“THAT’S MY SAMMY!” he yelled, pumping a fist into the air as he jumped to his feet.  
“Wait,” Zak called breathlessly. “What just happened?”   
“That!” Dean shouted excitedly, “Is what a proper salt-and-burn looks like. Oh hell yeah. VELAZQUEZ!” he bellowed. “VELAZQUEZ YOU SICK BASTARD, WE’RE COMING FOR YOU NEXT.” 

Zak scrambled to his own feet, ripping his flashlight from the gun before stumbling down the isle after Dean as the other man made his way towards the alter. His head was spinning, probably from lack of oxygen and the rate at which his blood was pumping through his body. Dean was several paces in front of him, climbing the few steps of the alter. 

As if in slow motion, Zak watched the massive, explicit crucifix shift, falling forward.  
“DEAN!” he screamed, leaping forward as if he could catch the thing. The other man looked up suddenly and dove to the side, just barely missing being crushed by the enormous statue. His dive wasn’t quite far enough and the bottom of the cross landed on his ankle, ripping a cry from Dean’s throat.  
“Dean, hold on!” Zak called again, bounding over the sculpture to arrive at Dean’s side. He heaved against the cross, shifting it enough for the other man to slide his leg out from beneath it.   
“Bastard,” he hissed, gingerly rolling up his pant leg to reveal a nasty gash and, what looked to Zak like, splintered bone.   
“Fuck, Dean…” he hissed out of empathy, dropping to his knees.   
“Eh, I’ve had worse,” Dean laughed shakily. “Alright, Velazquez, you got me. Damn it. You got me.”  
“Just stay still for a second. It looks pretty bad,” Zak gulped, hands shaking as they hovered above the wound.   
“No way, we’re close. That’s why he’s being a little bitch. Come on, help me up.”  
“You’re leg is broken, dumb ass!”  
“That’s never stopped me before, now come on.” 

Worrying his bottom lip, Zak still slipped a hand under Dean’s shoulder, hefting the other man to his feet. Foot. Dean hissed, favoring his injured leg.   
“Check the wall,” he told Zak through gritted teeth. The two hobbled over to the wall just below where the crucifix used to hang. Dean used his free hand to feel along the creases of the wood paneling.   
“Here,” he said gruffly, but Zak heard the triumph in his voice. With a tug, the paneling came loose, revealing a solid metal door. Zak knocked on it twice.   
“Iron?”  
“Lead,” Dean corrected. “Smart bastard. Alright, prop me against the wall and open her up.”

Zak leaned Dean gingerly against the wall by the door before grabbing the handle with both hands. The door was fucking heavy, and it groaned in protest before finally inching outwards. Zak slowly pulled it open to the point where both of them could pass through the entrance.  
“Ladies first,” Dean said with a smirk, earning himself a middle finger. Zak shone his flashlight into the darkness, illuminating a spiraling stone staircase leading downwards.   
“Can you make it?” Zak asked, reaching back to help Dean through the door.   
“Oh yeah, totally. I can barely feel it anymore,” Dean assured with a wince and a hiss. “I got this.”

They began to descend the stairs, Zak slightly faster than Dean.   
“Remember, when you get down there, salt first, then burn. The crusty bastard should go up in flames without a hitch.”  
“Right,” Zak said shakily. At the bottom of the staircase was another metal door. Zak pushed against it, finding it easier to move. 

Beyond the door was a small dim chamber lit by several gas lamps. Zak's eyes were drawn to the walls where large, elaborate symbols were drawn, no _etched_ into the wood. Zak briefly thought about Cas and how he had trouble pinpointing where... His trail of thought disintegrated as his eyes finally landed on the body of Emmet Velazquez. Zak blinked. He was nothing more than a decayed corpse, dry and rotten sitting in a plush, red velvet armchair. He seemed so harmless. Just a corpse.  
“So you’re the fucker behind all of this…” Zak mused aloud, walking further into the room. He grabbed the salt from his back pocket, still moving towards the body. A sudden, bursting paint irrupted at the base of his spine and he let out an agonized scream.   
“He’s part of it, yes…” a voice hissed in his ear. Zak looked down to see the bloodied end of a knife sticking through his stomach.   
“What…” he swallowed, tasting iron. Pitching forward as the knife was pulled from his back, he hit the floor hard, but barely felt it through the pain as he double over around his stomach. He pulled back, looking down. His hands were covered in blood. He was dying.

Above him stood the stringy-haired caretaker, breathing heavily.   
“My father will live on. He will live on forever.” He laughed, a high-pitched maniacal sound. “And your blood, the blood of a righteous man, shall feed both of us.” Zak opened his mouth, but no words came out. 

He was dying. He couldn’t feel his legs. He was dying. A strange series of emotions coursed through his body: regret, sadness, anger, fear, crushing fear. He was dying. 

“Hey,” Dean’s voice from the doorway. The caretaker whirled around, eyes wide. Dean smiled once before pulling the trigger, blasting a round of salt through the man’s head. Blood splattered across the back wall, the spray hitting the corpse of Velazquez as well. The caretaker went down with a heavy thud, body twitching violently before stilling. 

“Zak,” Dean’s voice. Zak’s eyes lolled heavily from one side to the other. He was dying. Dean’s face swam into view, panicked. He had pulled Zak’s head up onto his lap.   
“Hey, buddy, stay with me, okay?”  
“Dean,” Zak said, blood bubbling up past his lips. He coughed once, but it hurt too much to do again. “This…. Sucks,” he managed shakily. Dean let out a hysterical laugh.   
“Don’t I know it,” he agreed, and Zak heard the man’s voice waver with constrained emotion. “But you’re gonna be fine, okay? Fuck... this is all my fault...” He felt Dean smooth his hair back out of his face. It was a soothing gesture.   
“Why do you use so much goddamn hair gel?” he asked, voice wrecked with sadness.   
“’Cause… ‘s cool…” Zak smiled, eyes half-lidded. He could feel that his teeth were covered in blood.  
“Hey, Zak, man, stay with me. Don’t close your eyes. Don’t go to sleep. We’re gonna get you out of here…” Dean looked towards the stairs, then to his own useless leg. “Somehow, we’re gonna get you out of here, okay?”   
“Dean,” Zak managed to breathe. The pain was slowly numbing. He felt cold. “Burn him.”

He felt Dean place his head gingerly back down on the ground before shuffling over to where the corpse of Velazquez sat. Time felt as though it had slowed down. Zak heard the shaking of the salt container, then the striking of the match. He closed his eyes. He was so tired. So cold. He thought he heard someone scream. 

Then the darkness took him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Man, ain't that some shit. Almost to the end, guys! Thanks for reading so far. I love each and every one of you. Deeply.


	8. Shelter from the Storm

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> DISCLAIMER: This chapter contains gratuitous smut. About time, amirite? *suggestive eyebrow wiggle* 
> 
> SECOND DISCLAIMER: I know I've stated this a few times before, but I'll say it again: **The characters in this story are based off of real people, but do not reflect in any way their real lives. Any information outside of common knowledge is fictional. As in I completely made it up.**  
>  I don't know any of these guys. At all. So there's that. 
> 
> Anyways, enjoy! Only one more chapter after this one.

Bob Dylan was playing somewhere in the background. Zak opened his eyes just enough to see color and light. He blinked slowly several times to clear the sleep from the corners of his eyes. His limbs felt heavy and weak and he found it difficult to make a fist. 

_Come in, she said, I’ll give ya… shelter from the storm…_

Whatever he was laying on was soft, comfortable. He rolled over onto his side, rubbing at his eyes with one hand. He blinked in earnest this time, willing his vision back to normal. 

He had no idea where he was, but it appeared to be a motel room. It was slightly dingy with kitschy paintings of Maine beaches and wildlife. The song was coming from the small bedside alarm clock that had been switched to a local radio station. He was alone. His first thoughts went to his crew and whether they had a lock down to do. Then the memories came rushing back to him like a tidal wave. The house. Dean and Sam. Castiel. Where were Nick and Aaron? Were they alive? Why was he alive? 

_If I could only turn back the clock to when God and her were born,  
Come in she said I’ll give ya… shelter from the storm…_

As the song ended, Zak looked down at his shirt. The black fabric was dark and stiff around small tear from where the knife had gone through and his blood had dried. But when he lifted the shirt, there was no wound. Nothing. He was completely fine. Was it all a dream then? Had they not even gone to the house yet?

The door opened and Nick poked his head in.  
“Oh thank god, you’re awake…” Nick heaved a heavy sigh of relief striding over to where Zak lay on the distant bed.  
“Where am I? Where’s Aaron? And where’s…?” Dean. But was Dean even real?  
“You’re in a motel in Maine and holy shit dude, have we got some stories for you. Aaron’s outside. He wants to quit the show, man, and I don’t blame him one fucking bit. Dean and Sam are in the lobby talking to one of their ‘contacts’, at least that’s how they put it.”

Zak let out the breath he had been holding. He closed his eyes, rubbing a hand across his face and through his hair, which had flattened out a bit too much for his liking.  
“So everybody’s safe? How’s Dean’s leg? How’s Cas?”  
“The angel? Fucking hell dude, he’s something else,” Nick laughed, turning to look at the door. “He’s fine. Dean is fine. Everyone’s fine.” He was laughing in a sort of giddy disbelief.  
“Here, lay back, let me catch you up.”

Apparently, after Zak had lost consciousness, Dean had successfully torched Velazquez, effectively de-ghosting the house. All the wards and sigils that were blocking Cas’s Grace evaporated. According to Nick, the angel kicked into high-gear, zapping them all out of these, healing Zak and Nick, and locating Aaron.  
“Yeah, Aaron is still really shaken up. He said it was like he was transported back in time or something. Cas said that he fell through a rift, whatever that means. But it fucked him up pretty bad. He’s been in the back of the car talking to someone on the phone for about an hour now.” Zak felt a headache coming on as he attempted to process what he was hearing. 

“Sam and I are the ones that torched all the bodies of Velazquez’s victims,” Nick said triumphantly. “It was fucking brutal. Some of them seemed really fresh, too, like they hadn’t been dead as long as the others. Don’t know what that was about, but I felt like a total badass.” Zak gave him a tired smile, reaching up to pat him firmly on the shoulder.  
“We’re officially ghost hunters now, I guess… And not like that fucking lame ass show on SyFy either.” Nick grinned and they shared an intimate fist-bump.  
“Oh and that caretaker? Yeah, the nut turned out to be Velazquez’s inbred son. He had gone insane and had been living alone in the house for years by himself. Eating rats or some shit… I have no idea. But he had been assisting with his daddy’s murders since he was old enough to hold a knife. Seriously fucked up. But uh… he was unfortunately ‘caught in the fire’ and we couldn’t get him out in time.” Nick put strategic air quotes around his words. Zak knew what had happened. Dean had shot the fucker in the head. After he had stabbed Zak.  
“The house burned to the ground, man. No more reign of terror from that fucker,” Nick assured with a smile. Zak nodded, but something in his gut kept him from agreeing completely. 

“Hey, send Dean my way,” Zak requested, hoping he sounded casual. Nick gave him a salute.  
“Guess you guys turned the whole ‘hating each others' guts’ thing around, huh?”  
“For the most part,” Zak said with a lopsided smile as Nick left. Zak let his head flop against the pillow and stared blankly at the ceiling, unwilling to use any brainpower at the moment. He closed his eyes and took a moment to just feel the stillness of the room around him, to hear the occasional passing of cars outside, the hum of the electrical wires. He bathed in the feeling of being alive. The corner of his mouth twitched into a small smirk. His first near-death experience and he was already turning into a damn hippie. 

A few minutes later Zak heard someone fiddling with the lock before Dean shuffled hesitantly through the door. His eyes locked onto Zak’s with such intensity that Zak felt his chest tighten nervously. But Dean cracked an easy smile and Zak deflated.  
“Well look at you, all healed up,” he said, sliding his hands into his pockets as he casually walked over to the bed. Zak moved himself into the seated position, swinging his legs over the side of the bed.  
“I could say the same about you. Where’s Cas? I owe him a huge thanks.” Dean just pointed upwards.  
“Taking care of some angel stuff. He always runs off and misses the after party.”  
“Is there going to be an after party?”  
“Well, I consider any form of sleep an after party…” 

They shared a small laugh before lapsing into an awkward silence. Zak looked to his feet, then to Dean’s feet, then back to his own.  
“We’re probably going to have to head out. Bobby’s got another case for us to check out down in Pennsylvania, demon possessions and all that, so…”  
“Wait, like, immediately?” Zak sputtered, rising to his feet. “Don’t you guys ever take a day off?”  
“Unfortunately, that’s just not the way it works,” he explained with a thin smile.  
“Fuck that, my crew and I owe you and Sam our lives. We may have been killed if you hadn’t shown up.”  
“You were almost killed because we showed up,” Dean corrected.  
“No, that’s bullshit,” Zak didn’t know why he was mad but Dean looked vaguely like a cornered animal. 

He took a breath.  
“Dean,” he said calmly, “Don’t go just yet. Let… I don’t know, let me and the guys take you and Sam out to dinner or something. But just, take a night for yourselves. You can’t save the world, even if you try to start a day early. So just… chill for one night. Please?”

Dean gave him a look that was halfway between angry and conflicted. He opened his mouth as if to say something, but then shut it, looking Zak hard in the eyes.  
“One night,” he held up a finger for emphasis.  
“One night,” Zak repeated, trying not to sound overly excited. “Besides, I was just starting to like you.” He felt his own face grow hot, despite trying to play it cool.  
“Oh, yeah? That just goes to show you how almost dying can really warp your perspective,” Dean laughed, but his eyes shone brightly.  
“And you still owe me a drink. Remember?”  
“Yeah,” Dean conceded with a small, worried smile, “I remember.” 

\- - - - -

Later that night, Zak, Nick, and Aaron treated Sam and Dean to a steak dinner, complements of a shiny company-issued credit card for certain work-related expenses. As far as they were concerned, this was definitely a work-related expense. They laughed loudly at embarrassing stories from the show, and had quieter, somber moments when Dean and Sam talked about their lives and hardships. By the end of it all, they were all full, warm, and sleepy. Except for Zak, who was one of the only ones that had gotten a nice nap in that day. 

After paying for dinner, Aaron and Nick smoked a cigarette and struck up a conversation with Sam about good websites for archive research. Zak and Dean stood off to the side and loudly made fun of them for being nerds, laughing excessively at each others jokes. The lamer the better.  
“Hey, don’t forget about that drink,” Zak poked Dean in the chest.  
“Man, you are just not gonna let me off the hook on that one,” he said with a crooked smile, brushing Zak’s finger away.  
“Lots of traumatic experience. I’m gonna need to bury them pretty deep. Definitely gonna need some alcohol to help with that,” Zak joked, but he watched Dean’s face turn a little steely for a brief moment.  
“Well then let’s go,” he nodded, an easy smile sliding back into place.

They told the other three that they were going to go find a bar and invited them along. The excuses ranged from ‘too full’ to ‘too tired’ to ‘no money’. Dean called them wimps and grandmas, got one of the motel keys from Sam, and then he and Zak set off down the sidewalk. 

The streets were still wet with rain, car tires hissing through puddles as they passed the two men walking side-by-side, chatting idly. Dean had turned to quizzing Zak on his music preferences.  
“Favorite Zeppelin Album?”  
“Two. Closely followed by Four.”  
“I’m a fan of Four, myself. Best AC/DC lead singer?”  
“Bon Scott, no argument.”  
“Foreigner or Journey?”  
“Dude, Foreigner. Come on.”  
“Shit, man, maybe we are soul mates.” 

The downtown area was small enough to traverse on foot. Most of the locals were older and tended to turn in early, so at a quarter to nine at night most of the shops were shutting down. A small dive bar at the end of the street still had its neon Open sign flashing in the window.  
“Looks like my kind of place,” Zak said as Dean announced, “Perfect.” They chuckled and pushed inside, heading straight for the bar. 

A cute girl in a tank top and short shorts gave them an approving once-over as they sat down.  
“Out of towners?” she guessed aloud, picking up a few glasses to dry. Zak nodded, leaning towards her amiably.  
“Afraid so,” he said with a slight twang. “I come from the desert and have been downright freezing since crossing the state line up here. I’m in need of some spirits to warm me up. Can you help me out?” She laughed and he could tell she was humoring him, leaning on her elbows and nodding.  
“I can do that. And how about you?” she looked at Dean, biting her bottom lip flirtatiously. Zak felt a pang of jealousy rip through him like a lightening strike. He was almost always the center of female attention, but Dean outshone him immediately. He had the perfectly chiseled features of a male model, fucking pouty lips and big green eyes. Then, to make the situation even stranger, he realized he wasn’t entirely sure which one of them was making him more jealous. 

“I’m from the Midwest and I’d like to forget that I’m from the Midwest, so give me something strong enough for that,” Dean grumbled with a charming, half-concealed smile. The girl’s laughter was like a breath of fresh air to both of them, and she giggled all the while as she poured them their drinks. She started them out with two fingers of whiskey each. Zak raised his glass to Dean.  
“To…uh…” he stalled, pursing his lips as he tried to think of a good toast.  
“Do living to fight another day,” Dean supplied, with a sideways nod.  
“And to new friends,” Zak added, face flushing at Dean’s laugh. They clinked their glasses together and took a hearty sip.  
“Damn, girl knows her stuff. That ain’t no rail whiskey,” Dean commented, wiping his mouth on the back of his sleeve and shooting her a wink.  
“Well thanks, mister,” she said coyly with a bright smile, pointedly swaying her hips as she walked away. 

“Damn, dude,” Zak laughed. “Are you always this smooth with chicks?”  
“Yes,” Dean said with a confident smile before taking another swig. “I’m irresistible.”  
“Yeah, no kidding,” Zak laughed jokingly before his heart immediately leapt into his throat at the realization of what he had just said. He quickly swallowed several mouthfuls of whiskey, effectively draining his glass. Dean had swiveled to face him, a disbelieving smile on his face and Zak felt like a fucking idiot, trying to think of something to say to clear the air.  
“Damn,” Dean laughed a full, belly laugh, lips sliding into a crooked smirk, “I’m gonna have to get some more drinks in you. See just how loose those lips get.”

Zak nearly choked. That. That was _flirting_. Holy shit, Zak thought to himself frantically. Dean was flirting with him. Another man. Flirting. His face must have said it all, because Dean quickly backed off, schooling his expression back into a passive mask. He signaled to the girl to bring them two more glasses.  
“So what brings two guys like you up to a cold, frigid place like this?” she probed, looking more at Dean than Zak.  
“Oh, you know, the scenery, the friendly locals. And I heard rumor that your fair town had some of the most beautiful women in the country,” Dean cooed, sipping his whiskey coolly. “So far the rumors are holding true.”  
“Oh honey,” she laughed, and Zak saw her eyes flicker down to Dean’s lips. “Does all this smooth talking usually get you what you want?”  
“Usually, yes,” he said without breaking eye contact. Zak swore he could cut the sexual tension with a knife.  
“But,” Dean stretched backwards, arching away from her, one hand coming down to rest on Zak’s shoulder. “I’m taking the night off from my usual sampling of the local fare,” he smiled sweetly. “Me and my buddy here are celebrating.”  
“Oh?” she smiled bitterly. “What are you celebrating?”  
“The prevailing of good over evil,” Dean said cryptically with a serious look in his eye. ”Can we get two beers?”

With that they picked up their drinks and moved to a back table near the window.  
“Dude, you have her eating out of the palm of your hand. What gives?” Zak asked, flabbergasted. Dean gave Zak an inquisitive look.  
“I’ve learned the hard way to know a catch when you have one,” he explained with a strange since of finality, downing the rest of his whiskey. Zak looked out the window, rolling the words around in his head for a moment, before following Dean’s example and tossing back his drink. They sat in silence for a moment.  
“Why do you do it?” Dean asked finally, catching Zak off guard.  
“Do what? The show?”  
“Just all of it. In general. Try and take pictures of ghosts or get pushed or shoved. Why? Is it the adrenaline?”  
“Um…” Zak mulled it over for a minute, intentionally staving off the usual monologue that goes with that question. This wasn't an interview, it was Dean.  
“Yeah, I guess it is. Also, just sort of… y’know, looking for confirmation of life beyond death.” He looked down into his beer. “I guess Cas kind of clears up the whole God question for me then.” At that, Dean let out a bitter laugh.  
“Yeah, not as much as you might think.” Zak blinked.  
“What does that mean? Cas is an angel. He’s, like… seen God, right?”  
“Nope,” Dean shook his head with a tight-lipped smile. Zak didn’t quite have anything to say to that, so he let it fall to the wayside.  
“I guess it’s also the thrill,” he changed back to the original topic. “I’ve been called an adrenaline junkie before. But I think more than anything, it’s trying to change people’s lives. Change how they see the world. There’s so much more out there than we can see or taste or touch, you know? Of course you know…” he answered himself, taking a swig of beer. 

“And then there’s the mean spirits. The ones that hurt people and make their lives miserable. I can’t stand the thought of it… I was bullied for so long. All through middle school and high school and it sucks so hard. I just see these ghosts as big bullies, abusing their power. Someone’s gotta call them on their shit.” He continued to stare at his beer, waiting for the jeers.

To his surprise, Dean smiled a little, looking down at his own drink.  
“I can get behind that. But you guys have been going about it all wrong.”  
“Yeah, we know that now,” Zak agreed. He ran a hand through his hair, trying to spike it up some more, getting distracted momentarily by his reflection in the window.  
“You’re hair looks fine, princess,” Dean said with a smirk. Zak gave him the middle finger, but let it go anyways.  
“What were you bullied for?” Dean asked, and Zak could tell he knew it was a weighted question. He shrugged, trying to play it casual.  
“Y’know… the normal stuff. Being too skinny, being too interested in books and not enough in girls at the ripe old age of fourteen. Kids are ruthless. They find your weakness and they exploit it.” He sighed wearily, hoping to change the subject.  
“So you got buff and started fucking as many chicks as you could to prove them wrong, right?” Dean asked, and Zak was almost taken aback at the brazenness of the question.  
“Not… really. I mean, yeah, working out and getting big made me feel better. More confident. But…” Zak thought back critically for a moment. All the times being shoved against a locker, the spit droplets that landed on his cheeks as the word _faggot_ was hissed through twisted, jeering mouth.  
“I just turned out to be a ladies man,” he said coolly, leaning back in his chair. Dean huffed a laugh.  
“Of course.”  
“Why do you ask?” Zak pressed, hoping to turn the tables. 

Dean looked conflicted. He took a long swig of his beer.  
“I heard,” he said softly. “Heard what Velazquez said to you in that bathroom, or at least the tail end of it.” Zak felt his face go cold and his fingers tightened on his beer.  
“It was supremely fucked up, and… I just wondered... He got into my head too, yknow. The reason it took me so long to get to you was because he distracted me with...” he paused, looking out the windows. “Well, let’s just say the guy could clearly use our memories against us, because he nicely recreated my mother’s death for me.”

Zak was definitely not prepared to hear that. The pieces of Dean were slowly falling into place and he was beginning to understand the rough and tumble facade he first met last night. God, and it had only been a day, hadn’t it? The time in that house together had felt like years. But there was still so much to learn about Dean, and Zak’s chest ached with his desire to know. But Dean was still looking at him with those big, stupid green eyes and he was reminded that he overheard a ghost talking about shoving a cock up his ass.  
“Yeah, okay, fine,” he spat bitingly, feeling his face grow hot with anger and embarrassment. “I was bullied because a few fucking kids spread a rumor that I was gay. I mean come on. I was only fourteen, man! I had barely had a chance to figure things out on my own… And then these kids…” He felt lightheaded, the affects of quickly drinking the whiskey and beer starting to really sink in. His nose was slightly numb.  
“I’m not a faggot,” he spat, harsher than he meant to, and Dean reeled back like the words burned.  
“Whoa, take it easy man,” he said with his brow furrowed. Zak sat back, sighing sadly.  
“Sorry…” he apologized lamely.  
“It’s alright. It’s just… I’m just not a fan of that word, is all,” Dean sipped his beer nervously and Zak felt like a huge ass.  
“Yeah,” Zak agreed sheepishly. “After being called that repeatedly, I should probably know better than to use it at all.”  
“Surprisingly enough I’ve never been called that,” Dean said with a thoughtful look. Zak laughed sourly.  
“Well, of course not, you’re a lady killer,” he said, because it was obvious.  
“Yeah, but I uh…” Dean looked up in the corner of his vision, as if searching for the right words. “I… how do you put it, bat for both teams?” 

It was hard for Zak’s jaw to not hit the table. Did he mean...? Was he implying...?  
“You fuck dudes?” he asked before he could even think about a more delicate way to phrase it. Dean let out a surprised laugh.  
“I mean, sometimes. I lean more towards women. Like… eighty-twenty. I could probably count on one hand how many guys I’ve slept with, but, when you’ve dealt with as much shit as I have, you kind of learn not to discriminate. Life’s too fucking short for that shit.”

Zak felt a strange, weightless feeling in his chest.  
“That’s a thing? I mean, I know bisexual is a thing, I’ve just never met a bisexual dude who…” He motioned to Dean. “Looks like you.”  
“Uh, yeah, it’s a thing. And I doubt you’ll ever meet anyone else that looks like me,” Dean chuckled cockily, looking at Zak over the top of his glass as he took another sip of his beer. Zak was slightly speechless for a moment as he tried to process several things at once. One, Dean fucked dudes. Two, he had and was definitely flirting with him. And three, Dean _fucked dudes_. He felt all the cogs in his head grinding loudly. Did Dean want to fuck him? Did he want to fuck Dean? 

“Alright, so I can tell you’re having a crisis right now, so I’m gonna go get us two more beers while you work it out,” Dean said with a slight eye-roll before sliding out of his chair. Zak watched him walk to the bar, cursing himself for looking at his ass.  
“You’re not…” Zak closed his eyes and let out an angry, frustrated sound. He knocked back the last of his beer and let the glass hit the table a little harder than necessary. He looked over at the bar and saw the girl flirting with Dean again. His stomach twisted in a knot of jealousy and, yeah, okay, maybe he was a little… whatever. 

Dean returned with their beers and a slip of paper in his hand.  
“What’s that?” Zak asked curiously, leaning forward to take his beer.  
“Her number,” Dean said with a smirk. Zak laughed, hoping he sounded chill.  
“You gonna hit her up later?” He waited for Dean to stop taking, what seemed to be, an incredibly long swig of beer to answer.  
“Nah,” he said, a little breathless, licking the foam from his upper lip.  
“Dude, why not? She’s hot and practically falling into your lap,” Zak pressed, slipping into his usual wingman bro-mode. Dean smiled at him with a curious look, tilting his head as if Zak was missing the joke.  
“I just have other stuff on my mind,” he said silkily, and Zak would have had to deaf, dumb, and blind not to realize what Dean was talking about. He played dumb, though. Relaxing back into his chair. Fuck it, he thought somewhat drunkenly. If Dean can be selectively gay, so can I.  
“The house, right?” Zak said, with a small, knowing smirk.  
“Actually, that’s one of the things,” Dean said, laughing once before turning pensive. “I’m still hung up on Velazquez’s creepy-ass inbred son. Why in the hell would he go out of his way to contact you guys?” Zak felt a chill run down his spine and straightened slightly.  
“I don’t know, but I have a hunch,” Zak said, looking out the window, brow furrowed. “When I talked to Nick earlier today he recounted his brave and daring adventure with your brother and how they torched all the bodies below the crypt. He said some of them were still fresh… I think maybe the creepy fucker was still killing people, feeding daddy with more and more soul power. As far as his personal motives, I have no idea what he gained from that, other than sick pleasure…” They drank their beers in silence for a moment, mulling it over.  
“It just blows my mind that a dude can be that fucking evil, though,” Zak said finally. “Like, he had to have been seriously fucked up in the head. And he raised a fucking kid to be the same way…”  
“Sociopaths,” Dean agreed. 

They finished drinking their beers over much lighter conversation. Zak strategically avoided asking Dean about his sexual exploits, despite his burning curiosity, and Dean continued to shamelessly flirt with him. Zak still sat somewhere between being freaked out and totally loving every second of it. To be the focus of Dean’s attention was incredibly gratifying.

About twenty minutes later, their beers were drained and both were feeling sufficiently buzzed.  
“Hey, I’m not ready to go back yet,” Zak said as they paid for their tab. “Wanna just sort of… go for a walk?”  
“Sure,” Dean agreed with a genuine smile. “I’m not too tired myself.” They told the girl at the bar goodnight, and Dean said he’d call her if he was ever back in the area, then they left. 

It had gotten chillier since they had first arrived at the bar. Zak dug his hands further into his pockets, wishing he were wearing more than a thin hoodie. He shivered and used it as an excuse to walk closer to Dean. They made their way down the street in silence, turning down a small path that lead to a deserted park. The sign on the gate said nobody was allowed in after sundown, but they hopped the fence, giggling like a couple of teenagers. Zak could see Dean’s breath as he laughed. They wandered over to a small bench and decided to sit for a moment. The night was quiet around them save for the distant rhythmic song of crickets.

“Maybe I should become a hunter,” Zak mused aloud.  
“No,” Dean said firmly, almost angrily.  
“What, why not?” Zak all but whined. Dean smiled at him, close-mouthed, condescendingly.  
“Just trust me on this one. You don’t want this to be your life.”  
“Yeah? Then why exactly do you do it? As far as I can tell you get absolutely nothing out of it except for the gratification of fucking _saving people's lives_.” 

Dean stood suddenly, beginning to walk away from Zak before turning around again. His expression was that of frustration as he ran his fingers through his hair before letting his hands fall to his side.  
“You think I chose this life?” he asked, and yes, he was definitely angry now. “Do you think I sat down on career day in fifth grade and decided I wanted to hunt demons? No, none of this was my choice.”

He cleared his throat, cracking his neck once before pausing broodingly.  
“Our mom was killed… by a demon. She was a hunter before my dad and hated the life. She just wanted a house, a husband, children. She wanted a family, a normal life. But that’s the thing… once you start, you can’t stop. It’s like this beast that hooks its claws in. And no matter how hard you fight it or how much you want to get away, it drags you back in.

“Dad became obsessive after she died. He practically abandoned me and Sammy for this selfish… vendetta of his. He dragged our asses into this line of work and I will never forgive him for that. But I keep doing it. We keep doing it. Because we have to.” Dean’s eyes were glistening slightly. Zak was speechless. He wanted to speak, offer his justification, but knew he had no right to comment. So he remained quiet, just looking to Dean, waiting for him to continue. 

“And then I see you, and Nick and Aaron. I get so fucking mad when I see you paranormal investigator types because it’s like… you have no idea what you’re toying with. You walk a think line and all the while you get out unscathed. And that just burns me up inside.”  
“Well now I know what we’re dealing with,” Zak said, standing up. “And I can’t just pretend like none of it happened.”  
“That’s exactly what you do,” Dean protested loudly. “After Sammy and I leave, you forget everything. Do you understand? You have the chance to get out, so take it. Run. Forget. Everything.” 

Zak stood in silence for a moment, looking at Dean for a long moment before shifting his gaze to the side; Dean, breathing heavily, watched him for a reaction.  
“I can’t,” Zak said quietly, definitively, and he saw Dean’s shoulders soften. “Even if I could, I don’t want to forget.” 

With a sigh, Dean stepped towards him. Zak continued to look away, a myriad of emotions ripping through his body.  
“Hey,” Dean said softly, and Zak finally looked up at him. He was smiling sadly, looking as if there was something he desperately wanted to say. Zak remained silent, waiting. It had begun to lightly mist, covering their clothes with microscopic droplets of water. At last, Dean’s eyes trailed up to Zak’s hair. He let out a sad chuckle.  
“See, you’re stupid hair looks so much better without all that gel,” he said, reaching up to run his fingers through it. Zak stood, frozen, heart beating so hard he swore Dean could hear it. Dean’s hand was warm as it slid down to rest against the back of his neck.  
“I still think it looks cool,” Zak said shakily.

Before he could even register the motion, he felt Dean’s lips press against his, and that was all it took. Zak’s hands flew to the other man’s jacket collar and shirt, holding on as if he may go spinning out into the atmosphere at any minute. He kissed back fiercely, harder than he had ever kissed anyone before. It was tongue and teeth and pent up emotion. He felt Dean’s other hand pressing against his low back, bringing their hips together. 

His hands eventually snaked around the back of Dean’s neck, fingernails digging into the base of his hairline. Dean was groaning into his mouth, deep and throaty, not allowing Zak to forget for even a second who he was kissing. No one could ever forget they were kissing Dean Winchester, Zak decided. They rolled against each other, engulfed by pure sensation, _the feeling of being alive_ , Zak thought for a brief moment.

Almost reluctantly, he broke away from the other man, both of them panting heavily. Their breath mingled in clouds of steam that swirled upwards. Zak closed his eyes and let his head drop down to rest against Dean’s shoulder, hands sliding down to grab the lapels of his jacket again.  
“Fuck,” he breathed.  
“Not a bad suggestion,” Dean quipped, and Zak couldn’t help but laugh. He looked back up to find Dean staring at him with an open, questioning expression.  
“Didn’t think you’d actually… I mean, I thought maybe you might, but uh...” Dean rambled, looking off somewhere over Zak’s shoulder.  
“Yeah, uh, me neither honestly,” Zak laughed breathlessly. With courage he didn't know he had, he leaned in to kiss Dean again, softer this time. The other man’s lips were a little chapped, and the brush of their five o’clock shadow was something Zak never thought he’d experience, but wasn’t too unpleasant. He let his arms fall, hands coming to rest on Dean’s hips, and as the kiss began to slow to a halt, Zak found he still didn’t want to pull away. He rested their lips together for a moment longer before grudgingly pulling back.

Dean tilted his head back towards the direction from which they had come as a silent question. Zak nodded nervously and they made their way out of the park, hopping the fence again. Their walk back was almost completely silent, the only sounds between them being their footsteps falling rapidly against the uneven sidewalk.

As they reached the modest, two-story motel, they climbed the outdoor stairs two steps at a time to Zak’s room on the second floor. He fumbled with his key momentarily before he finally saw the little green light flash of affirmation. He swung the door open, surveying the room neurotically to make sure they were really alone. He heard it click closed behind him, and in a whirlwind of motion, Dean had grabbed him by the shoulders, swung him around, and shoved him flush up against the flimsy motel door. It creaked ominously at the sudden pressure. Dean attacked Zak’s mouth with the urgency of a man who knows how precious time really is. Zak let out a groaning, needy sound that he’d never heard come out of himself and immediately felt embarrassed. Any doubts were immediately quelled by Dean leaning into him harder, echoing him with a low moan that went straight to Zak’s cock. 

Dean shed his own jacket with a practiced elegance and nearly ripped the zipper off of Zak’s hoodie in his haste to get it off. They laughed into each others mouths, only breaking away for Dean to pull Zak’s tight, black shirt over his head. Then he paused, looking down at Zak’s torso thoughtfully. The anti-possession necklace that Dean had given him still hung just below the dip of his collarbone, rising and falling with his heaving chest.  
“Damn, man, when you’re not yelling at ghosts you must be hitting the gym constantly,” he chuckled, leaning in and running a rough hand up Zak’s abs before devouring his mouth again.  
“Fuck off,” Zak muttered through the kiss. 

Dean pulled him forward by his belt loops, walking backwards to the bed. He grabbed Zak by the hips, spinning him around to throw him down on the bed, and holy fuck that was hotter than Zak expected. He lay back, panting, watching as Dean took off his own shirt before crawling onto the bed to straddle him, leaning down to kiss and suck a line down Zak’s neck. Zak allowed himself to let out a long, wanton moan and Dean cursed appreciatively.  
“You like this?” he asked, nipping at an earlobe while grinding his hips down onto Zak’s. He earned a soft cry in response.  
“Yes,” Zak answered needlessly, surprised at how wrecked he sounded. Dean began to move down Zak’s chest, licking at one of his nipples before gently scraping his teeth across it. Now that felt good. Zak let him know by arching his back and crying out. 

For a moment, Zak thought maybe he should be a little quieter, unsure of the thickness of these walls.  
“Fucking hot,” Dean spoke wetly against his skin, and Zak decided fuck it, the guys could deal.

Dean brought a hand down to palm Zak’s erection through his pants, drawing another groan from his throat. He writhed on the bed as Dean gave it a firm squeeze, leaning up to kiss him deeply once, before beginning to unbutton his pants.  
“Dean,” Zak whispered with a shudder as the other man curled his fingers around the waist of his pants and briefs, ready to pull them off.  
“Yeah?” he looked up, lips swollen and wet and Zak almost regret stopping him.  
“I’ve never… um…” he swallowed, eyes darting towards the door and back. Dean smiled, reassuringly.  
“Just sit back and enjoy the ride. If something makes you uncomfortable, just tell me to stop. But I doubt you will…” And with that, Dean tugged, Zak lifted his hips, and his pants fell somewhere at the end of the bed. 

Zak’s cock fell back against his own stomach with a heavy slap. Dean waited a beat then swooped down to bury his face in the corner of Zak’s hip, nipping at the dip just below his hipbone. Zak nearly flew off the bed, sitting up and curling forward with a half shout and grabbing onto Dean’s hair. It was almost too much, the combination the sensation of tickle and pleasure. He huffed and moaned like a strung-out whore, twisting his fingers roughly into Dean’s short hair.

The man took sympathy on him and moved to lick at the base of Zak’s cock, and that was nice and familiar and fucking hot. Zak groaned, falling back down onto the bed, lessening his grip on Dean’s hair in favor of arching up towards the man’s mouth.  
“Shit,” Zak hissed as Dean licked a long stripe up the underside of his cock. _Of course another dude would know how to give great head_ , Zak thought off-handedly before his mind went completely blank as Dean swallowed him completely. 

Zak let out a string of curses, every muscle in his body tensing as he willed himself not to cum right then and there.  
“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” he chanted, like a prayer, neck straining as he looked down at Dean who returned his gaze, cheeks hollow as he sucked greedily. Dean closed his eyes, pumping Zak’s dick with one hand as he sucked him off like a pro. He continued at a nice, even pace for a few minutes and Zak could feel the impending orgasm rolling like waves at the base of his spine. He let his head fall back, eyes closing as he let out a long moan. Dean's free hand moved to Zak’s balls, giving them a light squeeze as one finger trailed slightly further south. All Dean had to do was brush his finger across Zak’s entrance and the man completely lost it.  
“Goddamnitfuck!” Zak shouted, arching his back off the bed and coming hard into Dean’s mouth. Dean let out a surprised sound, pulling off Zak’s dick with a wet pop as a last line of cum landed on his shoulder. Dean let out a good-natured laughed and wiped his mouth on the back of his wrist, a triumphant look in his eye.

Zak lay on the bed, chest heaving.  
“Fuck…” he huffed, and Dean laughed again, getting up off the bed and heading to the bathroom. The sounds of Dean cleaning up sounded much farther away than they were in Zak’s post-orgasmic haze. His heart was pounding in his ears and sweat had begun to form around his hairline.  
“So?” Dean asked, swaggering confidently back out of the bathroom. Zak just looked at him, trying to catch his breath as his dick slowly started to soften against his leg.  
“Just…” he swallowed, lifting a heavy arm to wipe his hand across his face. “Just give me a second man, you sent me to the fucking moon, for Christ’s sake…” Dean laughed and sat down on the bed beside him. With a sideways glance, Zak saw that the other man was still hard through his jeans. With a great effort, he brought himself up to his elbows. 

“Want me to take care of that for you?” he asked with more confidence than he felt. Dean looked down at his own erection like he just noticed it.  
“I mean, if you want. I know it’s not really your specialty…”  
“We’ll never know if I don’t try,” Zak responded with a nervous laugh. He slowly sat up, head swimming. He was nervous and tired and, more than anything, just wanted to curl up and sleep for days. But another part of him wanted to know what kind of noises Dean made. That part of him won out. 

Zak contemplated for a moment how he wanted to approach this. He wasn’t quite ready to take another dude’s dick in his mouth, so he ended up scooting to sit behind Dean on the bed, letting his legs fall to either side of the other man’s. Dean gave an approving head-nod and leaned back into Zak’s chest as he wrapped his arms around Dean’s hips to unbutton his pants. Dean was slightly taller than him, but it wasn’t too awkward of a position. _Just like jerking myself off_ , Zak thought, a small pep-talk, as he reached down Dean’s pants. 

Dean was bigger than him, and that bruised his ego only a little. The man was thick and heavy in his palm as he gave it an experimental tug. Dean let out an appreciative groan, closing his eyes. Zak spit into his hand several time, trying to coat Dean’s cock enough to get a nice, wet friction. Once he was satisfied, he took a few moments to lightly tease the man’s dick before he really began to pump in earnest. 

Zak quickly found out that Dean made wonderful noises. He let out short, deep little grunts and airy huffs, head thrown back against Zak’s shoulder. His hair tickled Zak’s temple, sticky with sweat and rain. Zak jerked him off the way he liked it, hoping it worked for the other man. A little twist of the wrist here, a thumb over the slit there. Dean’s moaning kept Zak going, and he felt himself getting hard again, dick pressed against Dean’s lower back. He wrapped his other arm around Dean’s stomach, holding him tightly in place as he continued to jerk him off. He bit down on Dean’s shoulder, eliciting a high, keening noise he hadn’t heard yet. It encouraged him, and he began to kiss and lick at the column of his neck, ending with a small bite on the earlobe.  
“Shit,” Dean hissed, pressing back harder against Zak, who picked up the pace, knowing the signs well. 

Dean came with a wordless shout, cum shooting across the carpet. He went limp as Zak lazily pumped every last bit out of him. He kissed his neck more affectionately one more time before releasing Dean and sliding around him. Dean fell back on the bed, eyes still screwed shut, breath labored. Zak smirked to himself. _I did that_ , he thought proudly as he walked to the bathroom.

After washing his hands and splashing some cool water on his face, Zak moseyed back into the room. Picking his briefs up off the floor, he slid them back on before climbing onto the bed. Dean had managed to tuck himself back into his pants and zip them up, but he still seemed slightly comatose. Zak leaned over him, waving a hand across his face.  
“Sorry,” Dean mumbled, eyes focused somewhere on the ceiling. “It’s been a while since… I’ve done anything with anyone. I needed that.”  
“Well,” Zak laughed, sitting back on his knees. “Glad I could be of service.”  
“And look at you,” Dean turned over, propping himself up on one elbow. “I thought you’d be kicking me out the door the moment the deed was done. No gay crisis?”  
“Meh,” Zak shrugged, looking off into a corner. “I figured I can still be straight if I want. One exception doesn’t warrant a fucking sexuality crisis.”  
“Ah, so I’m an exception,” Dean smirked, flipping onto his back to swing his legs up onto the bed, lazily stretching and arching like a large cat. 

Zak just watched him. He wasn’t sure if Dean planned to stay in his room tonight. A part of him really wanted him to, but he didn’t want to seem needy or clingy. He shifted slightly, pulling at a loose string on the bed sheet. It stubbornly refused to budge.  
“Do you want me to leave?” Dean asked, face suspiciously blank. Zak’s gaze darted up to him then back to the string.  
“Not really…” he confessed, throat tightening as he dreaded Dean’s reaction. To his relief, Dean just patted the bed beside him.  
“Then get your ass over here. It’s late and I’m all sexed-out and tired and still a little bit tipsy.” Zak let out a half-laugh before scooting up the bed. He settled down under the covers, still feeling horribly awkward, as Dean hopped up to turn the lights off before shedding his pants and joining him. 

Sighing heavily with contentment, Dean shifted the pillow behind his head a few times before falling silent. Zak lay, drumming his fingers nervously on his sternum, reaching up to run the small pendant between his thumb and index finger. He stared blankly up at the dark ceiling.  
“What is it?” Dean said finally. “I can hear you thinking from here.” Zak let out a weary sigh, bringing his hands up to rub his eyes and down his face.  
“I just don’t know what I should be feeling right now,” he said, letting his hands thump against the mattress in defeat.  
“Feel tired,” Dean suggested, but Zak wasn’t listening.  
“It’s like… I just had sort-of-sex with a dude, but that’s not what’s bothering me. Which, if you had told me that a year ago, I probably would have punched you in the jaw.”  
“Okay, so what’s bothering you then?” Dean sounded dead-tired, but seemed to be humoring him. Zak collected his thoughts for another moment.  
“Just, everything you said… about running away and forgetting. And I’m not going all chick-flick on you here, I promise, but it really fucking sucks that you’re not going to be in my life on a regular basis. Y’know? I mean, I feel like I barely got to know you, and that everything happened so goddamn fast, but…” he trailed off, not exactly sure where he was going with his train of thought. Dean was, thankfully silent beside him.  
“I guess I’m just… I just don’t want to forget or run away or anything like that… because…” _Because I never want to forget you_ , Zak thought, but didn’t have the strength to say. It was too much too fast. These feelings came out of nowhere and imbedded themselves deep inside. He felt like the room was spinning. 

Dean was completely silent beside him, and Zak thought for a moment that maybe he had fallen asleep or was too disgusted by all this overly-emotional bullshit. But then the other man shifted, turning towards Zak, slotting their bodies together. He felt Dean’s hand slide around the back of his neck as he dipped down to press their lips together. It was a tender kiss, and it scared Zak all to hell. He wanted roughness, fast, and hard. Anything but this… 

Shakily, he brought a hand up to Dean’s face, beginning to return the kiss with as much tenderness he possessed. It was slow, and frighteningly gentle. Both of Zak’s hands began to roam across Dean’s face and neck, thumbs grazing his cheekbones, fingers sliding up into his hair, palms brushing down his shoulders. _This is goodbye_ , Zak thought, and pushed against Dean’s chest to turn him onto his back. Zak followed him down, crushing their mouths together once again. He couldn’t bring himself to stop; he wanted to fall into the man below him, to learn everything there was to know. He wanted to memorize his scars, count his freckles. The desire was overwhelming and there was no rhyme or reason behind it. He just felt it. Zak curled an arm around Dean’s waist, holding him tight as the other man ran his hands soothingly over his sides and up between his shoulder blades. Their kiss slowed to a near halt as Zak felt an unshakable wave of lethargy wash over him. With one final kiss, he collapsed next to Dean on the bed, exhausted both physically and emotionally. He pulled his arm out from beneath Dean’s waist, but kept the other draped across the man’s chest. He felt Dean sigh once, deeply, before succumbing to sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aww yeah. I love when straight boys go gay for a night. Mmmm.....
> 
> Final chapter coming up soon! Thanks to whoever is reading this. You guys are my favorite weirdos.


	9. Long, Long Way from Home

In the morning Dean was gone. 

Zak blinked awake, bed cold and vacant beside him. He covered the immediate crushing sadness he felt with anger. Letting out a hoarse shout, he chucked his pillow across the room before falling back onto the bed to stare blankly up at the ceiling. He felt a yawning emptiness settle into the pit of his stomach, unshakable. Dean was gone, probably never to be seen again. And the fucker hadn’t even bothered to wake Zak up to say goodbye. He let his head fall to the side to look at the clock. Seven twenty-two. Their flight back to Nevada left in four hours. With a deep sigh, he somehow managed to get to his feet and wander into the bathroom to wash his face. Still in an angry huff, he put on the clothes he was wearing last night in order to go down for some breakfast. 

The meager spread of slightly stale bagels, tiny boxes of cereal, and cold doughnuts greeted him in the lobby of the motel. Nick was already downstairs, reading the local paper. Aaron’s absence told Zak the man was most likely still passed out. Zak grabbed a doughnut, a watery cup of coffee, and a small carton of milk before heading over to sit with Nick, who was currently engrossed in the local newspaper.  
“Morning,” Nick grumbled, flipping through several pages rapidly.  
“Good morning to you, sunshine,” Zak replied, nodding towards the paper. “Anything interesting?”  
“Dude, it’s fucking weird. Not a single report on the Velazquez house. I mean… people could definitely see the smoke from in town, but nobody has even bothered to investigate or send the fire department or anything. It’s weird.”  
“Yeah, you said that already,” Zak snapped, taking a bite of his doughnut then proceeding to talk with a full mouth. “I’m just glad we’re getting out of this fucking town.”  
“Well fucking A, dude, who lit the fuse on your tampon?”  
“I’m just done with this shit. We have zero footage; all of Aaron’s time-warp adventure turned up blank, and all the shit we have is from when we first ran into Sam and…” He sighed, feeling his heart tug a little at his inability to say Dean’s name. “I just wanna get back home where it’s fucking warm.” He took another angry bite of his doughnut. The thought of returning to his empty apartment wasn’t appealing in the least, but it was better than here.

Nick studied him for a moment, eyes narrowing suspiciously.  
“You’re pissed Dean and Sam left without saying goodbye, aren’t you?”  
“What?” Zak nearly choked on the doughnut he was still chewing. “No! Fuck… that’s not…”  
“I mean I was a little pissed, too. But, at the same time, they did say they had to get on the road pretty early. Other big important ghost hunting cases and all that.”  
“Demons,” Zak corrected off-handedly.  
“What?”  
“I think their next case had to do with demons…” Zak explained. Nick laughed in disbelief.  
“Man, I do not envy those guys.”

They sat in silence for a little longer, Nick still browsing the paper as Zak finished his doughnut. He felt ill. _Probably hung-over_ , he lied to himself as he sipped his coffee.  
“I just don’t know what we’re going to tell the producers…” Zak said miserably, resting his head in his hands. “We’re gonna get fired.” To Zak’s surprise, Nick merely shrugged at the comment.  
“I’m not sure how much more of this I want to be doing anyways. Not after all that…” he waved his hand in a vague gesture over his shoulder. Zak felt his jaw tighten.  
“Are you serious?”  
“Yeah, and apparently Aaron has already given them notice of his resignation,” Nick said, again, far too coolly for Zak’s liking.  
“And so that’s just it, huh? All these years working together, trying to find the perfect evidence, and when we finally score big and you guys are going to just bail?”  
“We didn’t _score big_ , Zak,” Nick finally snapped, slapping the paper down on the table. “We nearly got killed, dude. You were fucking stabbed by some inbred old kook, Aaron almost drowned in non-existent water, and I almost got my ass toasted. We barely made it out of there alive, and if it weren’t for that fucking angel you’d be dead right now, which is just too weird to say out loud in the first place.” 

Zak remained quiet after Nick’s rant, brooding silently. Alright, so both Nick and Aaron wanted to quit the show. Great. Perfect. Then where did that leave him? It was his livelihood, his passion. He’d been doing it for so long he couldn’t even begin to imagine life without it. And while his heart screamed _fucking cowards_ , the rational part of his mind agreed with them. They had experienced a paradigm shift in their worldview. That wasn’t something that you walk away with and expect life to go back to normal.

“They’re not going to let us off the hook. They’ll want us to do like… a farewell episode.” Zak scrubbed his fingers across his eyes. “I’m not a very good actor, bro… I don’t think I’ll be able to fake it anymore. I could every once in a while for the show when we weren’t getting much evidence, but now…” He sighed, taking another sip of coffee. “It’s just different. I _feel_ different.” 

They fell silent, both looking off in different directions. In his periphery, Zak saw Aaron shuffle sheepishly across the lobby to where they sat.  
“Hey,” he said, voice rough with sleep. Nick and Zak greeted him somberly.  
“So…” he began awkwardly, still standing. “I talked to the producers.”  
“Yeah, Nick told me,” Zak said, trying to keep his voice neutral.  
“I’m sorry man…” Aaron sighed. “I just can’t anymore.”  
“It’s cool,” he responded, shocked by his own composure. Aaron’s eyes widened slightly as well.  
“You gonna be okay?” he asked tentatively, and Zak saw him look over to Nick, who shrugged.  
“I’ll be fine. Let’s just pack up and catch that plane home.” 

\- - -

Zak trudged back up to his room to grab the remainder his belongings that he had barely had time to unpack. As he opened the door and scanned the room, he noticed something that he’d missed earlier that morning. A small notepad with the motel’s logo sat atop the long, wooden desk with a note scrawled in chicken-scratch writing across it. Zak quickly stepped over to it, snatching it up, heart pounding.

_Keep the pendant.  
D.W. _

Zak read the three-word note over and over again until his heart rate returned to normal.  
“Fucking asshole,” Zak muttered, but couldn’t help the smile that worked its way across his face. His free hand shot up to touch the small necklace that lay beneath his shirt, the flat metal charm pressing into his chest. He flipped the paper over finding nothing else written on the back and actually laughed out loud. It was so blunt. So Dean. He felt horribly sentimental, but he folded up the small note anyways and slid it into his wallet. With his mood slightly raised and a small smile still on his lips, Zak gathered the rest of his stuff and promptly left. He leaned against the slick railing of the second floor balcony and stared out over the wet parking lot of the cheap motel in the Middle-of-Nowhere, Maine. He took a deep breath, closing his eyes, and made a decision. It wasn’t an easy decision, but he made it none-the-less, knowing full well that it would change his life forever. 

Standing there, inhaling the scent of wet pavement and pine, Zak felt his world shift around him.

Let the hunt begin. 

 

**End**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And thus ends this roller coaster of a story I slapped together over the period of a year (off and on, give or take). I hope you enjoyed it! Thanks to all you crazies who actually read it. You are my life blood. 
> 
> I've been playing around with the idea of a sequel that would basically just follow Zak around as he struggles to be a big, bad hunter and learns a lot of shit the hard way, but I'm not making any promises. 
> 
> Anyways, feel free to take this universe and run with it if you're in the Supernatural or Ghost Adventures fandom. I think it would be super fun to explore and I'd love to see what other people come up with.
> 
> All my love and affection, you crazy kids.  
>  _-Topsy_


End file.
